In memoriam: Harry Belafonte, through his art and activism, left this world a better place

So many reasons. There are so many reasons to grieve the death on April 25 of Harry Belafonte, who died at home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at the age of 96.

And yet, grief cannot be separated from gratitude, or from the worlds of good Belafonte did for so many, across a long, rich life.

The film career was the least of it. Belafonte’s spanned in 2018. In Spike Lee’s film, he played a gently fictionalized version of himself, serving as the story’s civil and political conscience.