Yasuke is Japan’s first black samurai. He was brought to Japan in 1579 during the nanban trade with the Portuguese by an Italian missionary. *He essentially was captured as a slave and brought to Japan for mission trips. The origins are Yasuke are still unknown. We are not sure if he is from Sudan from the Dinka tribe, or from Mozambique from the Yao tribe, or Ethiopian.

Langston Hughes was an African American poet, writer, and activist. He wrote a lot about how proud he was of being Black and having Black heritage.

John Agard realised that he had a love for language after listening to cricket commentator, John Arlott, on the radio, in Georgetown, Guyana.

James Baldwin wrote novels, plays, essays, and poems. He was also a civil rights activist, who fought for the rights of Black people in the United States.

Ignatius Sancho was born into enslavement, and given to three unmarried sisters living in Greenwich, South-East London. He was taught to read by the Duke of Montagu, who lived nearby and encouraged him to learn.

Henry Ossawa Tanner was the first African American painter to be famous around the world. He became interested in painting after seeing a painter in a park when he was twelve. Tanner studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas in the United States. Her family moved to Chicago when she was young. She is famous for being a poet, author, and teacher.

Houston wrote about where African American people came from, to show that Africa has an amazing history. There was a myth at the time, which said that African people had no important history of their own, so Houston wanted to show this was wrong.

Chinua was born in Eastern Nigeria to a family from the Igbo tribe. Chinua is most famous for his first novel Things Fall Apart which was published in 1958. It tells the story of a Nigerian Igbo village and their life before Britain colonised Nigeria.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977, in Enugu, Nigeria. While growing up in Nigeria, she was not used to being identified by the colour of her skin, which changed when she arrived in the United States.

Carter G. Woodson was a famous African American historian, author, journalist, and creator of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. When he was young, he had to work in coal mines in Kentucky.

Born in Birmingham, Benjamin Zephaniah is one of the most famous Black British writers and poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. His parents were Jamaican, and he enjoyed reggae music and poetry from Jamaica as a child.