According to CNN, Melvin died at his home in Manhattan on Tuesday night. The news of his demise was announced by his family.

"Dad knew that Black images matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth? We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer`s mentality. It meant appreciating the power, beauty and interconnectivity of all people," Melvin`s son Mario Van Peebles said in a statement.