Though you wouldn't know it by looking at him.



Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (6 June 1799 – 10 February1837) was an Afro-Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin

Until he wrote the Fishin' Hole

It's a great tune! And now, I know who wrote it, and have heard the original. Yep - bein' black at heart is no crime!

Oh, but to have been a fly on the wall to watch Henry Thomas play the cane quills!



I may be wrong, but I believe there is a set of quills lying to the right of Henry Thomas in this artistic rendition


My son played Harlem Nocturne for his UCLA marching band audition. They graciously accepted him.

an Italian-American actor who portrayed a Native American in films and real life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody

Don't forget Lord Buckley:

provided him. If you can get your hands on Listen to the Lambs, a book that he wrote in response to the Watts Riots in the 1960s, you should.

He claimed to be "black by persuasion," but that isn't quite the same as claiming a full-on black identity, and he knew that his acceptance by the community he claimed as his own would be built on political, social, and artistic contributions as well as by sharing in the struggle--but not by cultivating deception. (Again, this is also something he discusses in Listen to the Lambs and elsewhere.) He was at times assumed to be black--often by audiences and sometimes by fellow musiciains--but his race wasn't a secret. You can find reference to him in magazines like Billboard and Jet in the 1940s and 1950s as a white musician.

Here's a snippet from Jet Magazine (which you can find on google books)