Mathieu da Costa
Mathieu da Costa (sometimes d’Acosta) was a member of the exploring party of Pierre Dugua, the Sieur de Monts, and Samuel de Champlain that travelled from France to the New…
Maria P. Williams
Maria Priscilla Thurston Williams (1866–1932) is credited as the first Black woman film producer for the silent crime drama The Flames of Wrath in 1923.
Elizabeth Carter Brooks
Elizabeth Carter Brooks (1867-1951) was an American educator, social activist and architect. She was passionate about helping other African Americans achieve personal success and was one of the first to…
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.