It is fitting that Harry Belafonte would name his memoir “My Song.” There are words that might be on sheet music, lifeless and limp. Then, there are soul-stirring commentaries like Mr. Belafonte’s that represent an unquenchable desire for life and liberty.

Mr. Belafonte’s life was his song.

His genealogy represented the melting-pot promise of America, with Jamaican, Scottish, and Dutch roots. His lifework spoke to the places where freedom might be deficient.

“Long before I became an artist, I was an activist,” Mr. Belafonte, who died Tuesday, said in a 2018 interview. “I don’t think one can be born into poverty and not find a lot of room to find things to do. I saw the inhumanity of poverty, and I decided that whatever my life would become, I would commit myself to try to make change with all the ingredients that go to make up poverty.”

Through the American Negro Theatre, Mr. Belafonte found a creative colleague in Sidney Poitier, and the two blazed a trail as both entertainers and activists. By the time the pair starred in “Buck and the Preacher” and “Uptown Saturday Night,” Mr. Belafonte had already established himself as an accomplished actor and Grammy-winning singer.

What will endure, however, is Mr. Belafonte’s activism. Inspired by the likes of Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King Jr., he made profound contributions, financial and otherwise, to the Civil Rights Movement. Even into his 80s, he lent support to young activists such as the Dream Defenders, an activist group that conducted a sit-in protest at the Florida Capitol in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in a fatal shooting.

Activism made his heart flutter, and he admitted as such in 2013 in regards to the Defenders: Their activism “made my autumn heart dance like it was spring.”

Mr. Belafonte’s song is a triumphant tune that will resonate for generations to come.