George Jewett
George Henry Jewett II (April 1870 – August 12, 1908) was an American athlete who became the first African-American football player at both the University of Michigan and Northwestern University,…
Prince Monolulu
Ras Prince Monolulu (26 October 1881 – 14 February 1965), whose real name was Peter Carl Mackay (or McKay), was a horse-racing tipster, and something of an institution on the…
Dido Belle
Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761 – July 1804) was a British heiress and a member of the Lindsay family of Evelix. She was born into slavery and illegitimate; her mother, Maria…
Emperor Septimius Severus
Lucius Septimius Severus was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa.
Abbot Hadrian
Adrian, also spelled Hadrian (born before 637, died 710), was a North African scholar in Anglo-Saxon England and the abbot of Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s in Canterbury. He was…
Sara Forbes Bonetta
Sara Forbes Bonetta, (born Omoba Aina; 1843 – 15 August 1880), was a princess of the Egbado clan of the Yoruba people in West Africa who was orphaned during a…
Eric Irons OBE
Eric George Irons OBE (1921–2007) was Britain’s first black magistrate and a campaigner for equal rights.
Betty Campbell
Betty Campbell MBE (6 November 1934 – 13 October 2017, born Rachel Elizabeth Johnson) was a Welsh community activist, who was Wales’ first black head teacher.
John Ystum
John Ystumllyn (born c. 1738, died 1786), also colloquially known as Jac Du or Jack Black, was an 18th-century Welsh gardener and the first well-recorded black person of North Wales.
Henry “Box” Brown
Henry Box Brown (c. 1815 – June 15, 1897) was a 19th-century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom at the age of 33 by arranging to have himself mailed in…