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With the singer Harry Belafonte, she was half of a celebrated, and sometimes denounced, interracial power couple who pressed the cause of civil rights in the 1960s.
By Ian Zack
Ian Zack, a New York journalist and author, is writing a biography of Harry Belafonte.
Julie Robinson Belafonte, a dancer, actress and, with the singer Harry Belafonte, half of an interracial power couple who used their high profiles to aid the civil rights movement and the cause of integration in the United States, died on March 9 in Los Angeles. She was 95.
Her death, at an assisted living facility in the Studio City neighborhood, was announced by her family. She had resided there for the last year and nine months after living for decades in Manhattan.
Ms. Belafonte, who was white and the second wife of Mr. Belafonte, the Black Caribbean American entertainer and activist, had an eclectic career in the arts. At various times she was a dancer, a choreographer, a dance teacher, an actress and a documentary film producer.
Ms. Belafonte traveled the nation and the world with her husband and their children during Mr. Belafonte’s sold-out concert tours in the late 1950s and ’60s, presenting an image of a close interracial family that was otherwise rarely seen on television or in newspapers and magazines.
She was at Mr. Belafonte’s side when they planned and hosted fund-raisers for civil rights groups, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the more militant Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
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