Sarah Ratliff's Blog, page 4

Walter Francis White

Walter Francis White was born in 1893 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was an American civil rights activist and led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1931 to 1955. Both White’s parents were mixed race and born into slavery. After the Civil War, they attended college, and his father became a […]

Jessica Ennis-Hill CBE

Jessica Ennis-Hill CBE was born Jessica Ennis in Sheffield, England in 1986. She is a track and field athlete and the current Olympic and world heptathlon champion. Ennis’s father is Jamaican and her mother is English. She began her athletic career at age 11, when she won a prize at a local summer track event, […]

Alessandro de Medici

Alessandro de Medici was the first duke of Florence, from 1532 to 1537. Alessandro’s mother was a Black serving woman for the Medici family, and his father was most likely the then-17-year-old Cardinal Giulio de Medici. The cardinal later became Pope Clement VII and was the nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Alessandro fled for two […]

Amerie (Ameriie)

The R&B singer Amerie (with the alternate spelling Ameriie) was born Amerie Mi Marie Rogers in Washington D.C. in 1980. Amerie’s mother is the Korean artist Mi Suk, and her father is Black and works for the U.S. military. Amerie grew up as a military kid, living in different states and countries. Korean remains her […]

Leona Lewis

Leona Lewis is a British singer and songwriter, as well as a campaigner for animal welfare. She was born in London in 1985. Her father is of Afro-Guyanese descent, and her mother has Welsh, Irish and Italian heritage. Lewis won the reality show The X Factor in 2006, which launched her music career. In 2008, […]

Ariana Miyamoto

Ariana Miyamoto was born in Japan in 1994 to a Japanese mother and Black father. Her father had been stationed in Sasebo in the United States Navy and later returned to Jacksonville, Arkansas. Aside from spending two years in Arkansas in her early teens, Miyamoto has remained in Japan. However, per Japanese tradition, which largely […]

President Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born Barack Hussein Obama II in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961. Obama is the 44th President of the United States and the first Black man to be elected to the Oval Office. Obama was born to a White mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father. Obama’s parents divorced in 1964, and he was […]

Lenny Kravitz

Lenny Kravitz is an American singer, musician, songwriter and actor. He was born Leonard Albert Kravitz in Manhattan in 1964. His mother was Roxie Roker from the television show The Jeffersons, who was of Bahamian and African-American descent, and his father was an NBC news producer of Russian Jewish descent. Kravitz’s accolades include four Grammy […]

Bob Marley

Bob Marley was born in Jamaica in 1945 under the name Robert Nesta Marley. He is an iconic reggae singer, musician and songwriter. Marley’s mother was Afro-Jamaican, and his father was White Jamaican and born in Sussex, England. Marley is considered one of the most influential musicians of all time. He is best known for […]

Carol Channing

Carol Channing was born in 1921 in Seattle, Washington. Now 94 years old, she held a long career as an actress, singer, dancer, comedian and voice actress. Channing’s mother was White, and her father was half White and half Black but passed for White. Channing’s mother told her about her father’s ethnicity when she was […]