William Alexander Leidesdorff was born in 1810 in the Danish West Indies. The son of a white Jewish Danish plantation owner and his common-law wife, Anna Marie Sparks, who was said to be of mixed African and Spanish and/or Carib ancestry, Leidesdorff left St. Croix in his teens to travel to Denmark in order to […]
African-American actor Frank Silvera starred in many top-tier Hollywood shows and films as a white man. The Kingston, Jamaica native held his strongest roles in the 1950’s and 60’s. With a fair-skinned complexion, Silvera usually played the leading white man on Broadway. He wasn’t able to play a black man until he financed his own […]
William H. Johnson, an African-American man, was the personal valet of President Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was employed by the president well before he went to the White House. He was there when Lincoln received the Republican Nomination for president. William Johnson accompanied the president to the famous Gettysburg Address in November 1863. When Lincoln became […]
Commander Wesley Brown became the first black Naval Academy graduate on June 3, 1949. Brown, who served in WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, was admitted to the Naval Academy with five other black candidates in 1945. The Howard University Graduate attended Annapolis alongside President Jimmy Carter, who was his friend and colleague […]
