UNITED STATES civil rights and entertainment giant Harry Belafonte died today, aged 96.

Mr Belafonte died of congestive heart failure at his New York home, with his wife Pamela by his side.

He was one of the first black performers to gain a wide following on film and to sell a million records as a singer, including his signature hit Banana Boat Song (Day-O).

But he forged a greater legacy as he scaled back his performing career in the 1960s and lived out his hero Paul Robeson’s decree that artists are “gatekeepers of truth.”

Mr Belafonte helped organise and raise support for civil rights movement protests alongside Dr Martin Luther King. 

He was later a fierce critic of US foreign policy and once called George W Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world.”

He also caused a storm when describing black US secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as being like slaves who worked in their master’s house rather than in the fields.

Mr Belafonte said that he was “an activist who became an artist: I was not an artist who became an activist.”