Bert Williams: The Funniest Man We Never Saw, the Saddest Man We Never Knew

“The Funniest Man We Never Saw, The Saddest Man We Never Knew” – W.C. Fields Known during his lifetime as “the funniest man in America,” Egbert “Bert” Austin Williams enjoyed fame as the straight man and ballad singer of the African American comedy team of Williams and Walker. Together, the two men became one of…

The Sherlock Holmes of Black History: Arturo A. Schomburg

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Afro-Latino, the Sherlock Holmes of Black History. (January 24, 1874-June 8, 1938) A bibliophile, collector, writer, and a key intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Puerto Rico in 1874, to a mother of Danish West Indian origin and a father of German ancestry, Schomburg moved to New York in 1891….