Black people

Black people is a term often used in North America to refer to Americans and Canadians of Sub-Saharan African descent. Outside North America, the term "black" or close translations of it, is also used in other socially based systems of racial classification or of ethnicity for persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned due to high levels of the chemical melanin in their skin relative to other "racial" groups – or else who are defined as belonging to a "black" ethnicity in the country. Please note that the phrase "black people" is not necessarily common parlance in most of Africa, as the vast majority of the population there is black and thus not given to self describing as "black".

• 
  Kofi Annan
  (Ghana)
• 
  Julius Nyerere, Zanaki people, Tanzania
• 
  Lwegeleza III King of Vira people or Bavira people, DR Congo
• 
  Wilson Kipsang Kiprotich, Kenya
• 
  Jean Ping, Afro-Asian, from Gabon, of Wenzhou Chinese ancestry
• 
  Cetshwayo kaMpande, Zulu
• 
  Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho, Sotho
• 
  Lewanika, Lozi
• 
  Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi
• 
  Wangari Muta Maathai
  (Kenya)
• 
  Nelson Mandela
  (Xhosa people, South Africa)
• 
  Woman of the Maasai people, Tanzania
• 
  San woman
• 
  Mother and child, Makua people, Mozambique
• 
  Woman of the Fula people, Niger
• 
  Woman of the Himba people, Namibia
• 
  Woman, Gambia
• 
  Men from the Basters (Dutch and Black African descent) of Namibia
• 
  South African family, of European and Black African descent (the Coloured of Southern Africa)
• 
  Girl and child of the Malagasy people of Madagascar (of Black African and Southeast Asian ancestry)
• 
  Youssou N’Dour, of Wolof and Serer ancestry, Senegal
• 
  Ali Farka Touré, of Songrai and Fula ancestry, Mali
• 
  Chinua Achebe, Igbo people, Nigeria
• 
  Wole Soyinka, Yoruba people, Nigeria
• 
  Aïssa Maïga, Senegal
• 
  Uhuru Kenyatta, Kikuyu people, Kenya
• 
  Kwame Nkrumah
  (Ghana)
• 
  Robert Mugabe, of Malawian and Shona ancestry, Zimbabwe
• 
  Goodluck Jonathan, Ijaw people, Nigeria
• 
  Joseph Kabila
  (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• 
  Women of the South Ndebele people
• 
  Paul Kagame
  (Tutsi, Rwanda)
• 
  Pierre Nkurunziza
  (Hutu, Burundi)
• 
  Salif Keita, Mandinka, Mali (Albinism renders him without skin pigment)
• 
  Man of the Hausa people, Northern Nigeria
• 
  Alek Wek, Dinka people, South Sudan
• 
  Alexander Animalu, Igbo people, Nigeria
• 
  Mobutu Sese Seko
  (Ngbandi people, Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• 
  Babatunde Osotimehin, Ogun State, Nigeria
• 
  Carlos Lopes, Guinea-Bissau
• 
  Michel Sidibé, Mali
• 
  Asha-Rose Migiro, Tanzania
• 
  Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba
  (Senegal)

• 
  Portrait of George Washington's Cook, Gilbert Stuart, ca. 1795-1797
• 
  Richard Allen
• 
  Absalom Jones
• 
  Prince Hall
• 
  Peter Williams, unidentified artist, ca. 1810-1815
• 
  Joseph Rainey
• 
  Joseph Jenkins Roberts, later a citizen of Liberia
• 
  Edward James Roye, African American of Igbo ancestry, later an Americo-Liberian (People of Liberia of African American, not direct Black African descent)
• 
  Creole in a Red Turban, Louisiana Creole woman, Jacques Amans, ca. 1840
• 
  Patrick Francis Healy, of European, Irish American and African American ancestry
• 
  "Uncle Marian", African American held as a slave in North Carolina
• 
  Four generations, held as slaves, South Carolina
• 
  Frederick Douglass
• 
  Harriet Tubman
• 
  North Carolina children, ca. 1870 (after Emancipation)
• 
  George Washington Carver
• 
  W. E. B. Du Bois
• 
  Daniel Hale Williams
• 
  Photograph curated by Du Bois for the Exposition Universelle (1900)
• 
  Scott Joplin
• 
  Palmer Hayden
• 
  Basin Street, African American and Louisiana Creole people, painting by Palmer Hayden
• 
  Jack Johnson
• 
  Duke Ellington
• 
  Paul Robeson
• 
  Joe Louis
• 
  Louis Armstrong
• 
  Fats Waller
• 
  Billy Eckstine
• 
  Ella Fitzgerald
• 
  Marian Anderson
• 
  Dinah Washington
• 
  Jackie Robinson
• 
  Cousins Charles Alston (left) and Romare Bearden, with Bearden's Cotton Workers
• 
  Jacob Lawrence
• 
  Tommy Potter, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Jordan (Max Roach in background)
• 
  Frank Lucas
• 
  Ralph Ellison
• 
  Ralph Bunche
• 
  Otis Redding
• 
  John Coltrane
• 
  Thelonious Monk
• 
  Lena Horne, of both maternal and paternal, Native American, European American and African American ancestry
• 
  Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) women
• 
  Martin Luther King Jr.
• 
  Malcolm X
• 
  Sidney Poitier (of Bahamian ancestry) and Harry Belafonte (of Jamaican and Martiniquan ancestry)
• 
  Odetta
• 
  Sugar Ray Robinson
• 
  Muhammad Ali
• 
  Joe Frazier
• 
  Stevie Wonder
• 
  Leontyne Price
• 
  Sammy Davis Jr.
• 
  Bill Russell
• 
  Chuck Berry
• 
  Ray Charles
• 
  Wilt Chamberlain
• 
  Hank Aaron
• 
  Jimi Hendrix
• 
  Bill Cosby
• 
  James Brown
• 
  Members of the Jackson family children
• 
  Jesse Jackson
• 
  Gordon Parks
• 
  American Gothic, portrait of Ella Watson, by Gordon Parks
• 
  Tina Turner, African American, with Native American and European American ancestry, now a citizen of Switzerland
• 
  Colin Powell
• 
  Carol Moseley Braun
• 
  Michael Jordan
• 
  Toni Morrison
• 
  O. J. Simpson, with daughter Sydney Brooke Simpson of African American and European ancestry
• 
  Eddie Murphy
• 
  Condoleezza Rice, scientifically determined to be of 51% African, 40% European and 9% Asian or Native American genetic descent, with Mitochondrial DNA tracing back to the Tikar people of Cameroon
• 
  Barack Obama, of Irish American and Kenyan ancestry, with Michelle Obama, of African American (Gullah/South Carolina Lowcountry) ancestry
• 
  Eric Holder, whose father and both maternal grandparents were from Barbados
• 
  Diana Ross
• 
  Oprah Winfrey, scientifically determined to be of 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American and 3% East Asian (possibly Native American) descent
• 
  Tiger Woods, self described as "Cablinasian" (abbreviation from Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian); African American, mixed European, Dutch, Chinese, Thai and possibly Native American
• 
  Kamala Harris, of (Black African) Jamaican American and (East) Indian American ancestry
• 
  Whitney Houston, of Native American, African American and Dutch ancestry
• 
  Beyoncé, of African American and Louisiana Creole (Native American, European and African) ancestry
• 
  Serena Williams
• 
  Yaya DaCosta, of African American, Brazilian and Nigerian ancestry
• 
  France Winddance Twine (Black Indian: Native American and African American)
• 
  Félix Trinidad, Puerto Rican
• 
  Chanel Iman, of African American and Korean ancestry
• 
  Leilani Leeane, of African American, Puerto Rican and Filipino ancestry
• 
  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• 
  Prince
• 
  Pam Grier, of Native American (Cheyenne), African American, Hispanic American and Filipino ancestry
• 
  Jennifer Beals, of African American and Irish American ancestry
• 
  Mariah Carey, of African American, Venezuelan (including Afro-Venezuelan) and Irish American ancestry
• 
  Vin Diesel, of English, Scottish and German maternal ancestry and unknown paternal ancestry and who self-identifies as "definitely a person of color" (raised by his mother and an African American stepfather)
• 
  Lenny Kravitz, of African American, Bahamian and Russian Jewish ancestry, with his daughter Zoë Kravitz, whose mother, Lisa Bonet, is of African American and Jewish ancestry
• 
  Jay-Z
• 
  Henry Louis Gates, scientifically determined to be of 60% European, 34% African (including the Yoruba people) and 6% Asian ancestry
• 
  Ertharin Cousin
• 
  Shauntay Hinton
• 
  Gabourey Sidibe, of African American and Senegalese ancestry
• 
  Patrice Hollis
• 
  Isis King (born male, now a transgender female)
• 
  Andres Serrano, of Honduran and Afro-Cuban ancestry
• 
  Tyra Banks
• 
  Jerry Pinkney
• 
  Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, of Black Nova Scotian and Samoan ancestry
• 
  Ashanti

Brazil has the world's largest population of Black African people outside of Africa, with upwards of 50% of the nation's people having black or partial black ancestry.

• 
  Luiz Gama
• 
  Zumbi
• 
  Pelé
• 
  Jamelão
• 
  Soraia Santos
• 
  Gaby Amarantos
• 
  Lais Ribeiro

• 
  The Negress Katherina, Germany Albrecht Dürer (1521)
• 
  Alessandro de' Medici, "il Moro" ("the Moor"), Italy, believed by some historians to be of Black African ancestry
• 
  Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, France (father of Alexander Dumas
• 
  Afro Turk of the Ottoman Empire, Jean-Léon Gérôme
• 
  Ivan Gannibal, Russian of Black African descent, great-uncle to Aleksander Pushkin
• 
  Angelo Soliman, Kanuri (Nigeria), resident of Vienna, Austria
• 
  Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben, 1/4 African ancestry, grandson of Angelo Soliman
• 
  John Ware with family, African American, later a citizen of Canada
• 
  Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, of English and Sierra Leonean Creole ancestry
• 
  Kwasi Boakye, prince of the Ashanti Empire, later a citizen of the Netherlands and a resident of the Dutch East Indies
• 
  Josephine Baker, African American, then a citizen of France in 1937
• 
  Portia Simpson-Miller, Jamaica
• 
  Marabou man (African and East Indian), Haiti
• 
  Naomi Campbell, of Black British descent
• 
  Lura
  (Afro-Portuguese)
• 
  Oscar Peterson
  (Black Canadians)
• 
  Susana Baca, Peruvian of African descent
• 
  Derek Walcott, from Saint Lucia, of European and Black African descent
• 
  Afro Mexicans
  (girl)
• 
  Afro-Cuban
  (woman)
• 
  Piedad Córdoba, of Afro-Colombian descent
• 
  José Leonardo Chirino, Venezuelan of European and Black African descent
• 
  soldier, from the region of Abkhazia in Europe, of African descent
• 
  Sara Forbes Bonetta, Yewa royalty, living briefly under the auspices of Queen Victoria in England
• 
  Portrait, by Jan Mostaert, of a man possibly in the court of Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy
• 
  Marcus Garvey
  (Jamaica)
• 
  Ronald Venetiaan
  (Suriname)
• 
  Ruud Gullit, of Afro-Surinamese and Dutch ancestry
• 
  V V Brown, British, of Jamaican and Puerto Rican ancestry
• 
  Woman of the Siddi people (Bantu ancestry), India
• 
  Deborah Cox, Canadian of Afro-Guyanese ancestry
• 
  Melanie Fiona, Canadian of Afro-Guyanese, Indo-Guyanese and Portuguese ancestry
• 
  Bob Marley, of European-Jamaican (British/Syrian) and Afro-Jamaican ancestry
• 
  Usain Bolt
  (Jamaica)
• 
  Idris Elba, from the United Kingdom, of Sierra Leonean and Ghanaian ancestry
• 
  Malcolm Gladwell, born in the United Kingdom of Jamaican and British ancestry, now a citizen of Canada
• 
  Wifredo Lam, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Asian, of Chinese, Congolese and Cuban mulatto ancestry
• 
  Arabic man, Jerusalem
• 
  Bill White, Black Nova Scotian (Canada)

• 
  William Lanne, Aboriginal Tasmanian
• 
  Ati woman from the Philippines
• 
  David Gulpilil, Indigenous Australian
• 
  Sam Watson, Indigenous Australian
• 
  A Great Andamanese Negrito

• White people