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While the Beethoven tweetstorm's going on there's a bunch of cool historical figures we know were poc and they still aren't getting the attention they deserve.
Thomas Alexandre Dumas, born into slavery he joined the French military and eventually became the highest ranked black person in a western army until 160 ish years after his death. His son wrote The 3 Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask.
(He might also be evidence that Neil De Grasse Tyson is immortal).
There's Joseph Bologne, who was a fencing champ, conductor of a orchestra in Paris and composer.
Europe was not as ethnically monolithic as some people like to imagine. One of Henry the 8th's court trumpeters were black (he's in this tapestry).
Here is Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus, more commonly known as Phillip the Arab. He was one of the few Pagan Roman emperors who was friendly to Christianity and is one of the emperors who appears to have not been 'white' (tho Romans saw race v differently than us).
Here is Abram Petrovich Gannibal, he was a slave taken to Russia as a child and gifted to the Tsar, who freed and adopted him. He joined the military, hung out with Voltaire became a notable figure in the Enlightment and had a great grandson- the novelist Pushkin.
Feel free to add your own but I'm gonna bow out with a sweet 19th century burn from Alexandre Dumas to a dude who was being racist to him.
'My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.'
'My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.'
