The Black elite is any elite, either political or economic in nature, that is made up of people who are of Black African descent. In the Western World, it is typically distinct from other national elites, such as the United Kingdom's aristocracy and the United States' upper class.
Francis Williams, an Afro-Caribbean British scholar and poet. A member of a property-owning Afro-Jamaican family, he took British citizenship in 1723.
The Nigerian British actor David Oyelowo has had a successful career in both Britain and the United States, where he has also taken U.S. citizenship. He was born into a royal family of the Nigerian chieftaincy system.
The model Adwoa Aboah is a Ghanaian British descendant of the Lowthers of Lowther Castle, Earls of Lonsdale. Her earliest Lowther ancestor served as Lord Warden of the March of Western England in the 16th century.
A chief of the Crow Nation, James Beckwourth was the son of an American planter and his enslaved African-American mistress. He is regarded as the most important black mountain man in the history of the Old West.
Sara Forbes Bonetta, otherwise known as Sally Forbes Bonetta,, was ward and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She was believed to have been a titled member of the Egbado clan of the Yoruba people in West Africa, who was orphaned during a war with the nearby Kingdom of Dahomey as a child, and was later enslaved by King Ghezo of Dahomey. She was given as a "gift" to Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the British Royal Navy and became a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She married Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy Lagos philanthropist.
Sara Forbes Bonetta photographed by Camille Silvy in 1862
Lithograph of Forbes Bonetta, after a drawing by Frederick E. Forbes, from his 1851 book Dahomey and the Dahomans; being the journals of two missions to the king of Dahomey, and residence at his capital, in the year 1849 and 1850
A portrait of James Pinson Labulo Davies and Sara Forbes Bonetta, photographed in London in 1862 by Camille Silvy
Sara Forbes Bonetta by Camille Silvy
