Trivia: African American actor LeVar Burton was a 19-year-old UCLA drama student when he was catapulted into international fame. On January 23, 1977, Burton made his professional debut as young Kunta Kinte, the protagonist of the classic TV miniseries Roots. He went on to give first-rate performances in such TV movies as Dummy (79) and One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story (78). Among LeVar Burton's more conspicuous TV appearances in the past decade have included his hosting chores on PBS' Reading Rainbow and his regular role as sightless Lieutenant Geordi LaForge on the syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation (87-92). He has continued playing Lt. LaForge in the feature film versions of Star Trek. Burton is also a published author. Aside from the Star Trek films, his big-screen credits include the biopic Ali. Burton has also directed a handful of projects including episodic television, the senior-citizen romantic comedy Reach for Me, and Miracle's Boys - a drama about three brothers growing up in difficult circumstances.

Trivia: Actress Madge Sinclair was born and raised in Jamaica. A bright and ambitious student, Sinclair excelled in speech and drama, winning several awards. She put her theatrical aspirations on hold when she married a Jamaican policeman, working for several years as a schoolteacher. In 1968, she moved to New York with her two sons in tow, hoping to launch an acting career. While opportunities were still rather limited for black performers in the late 1960s, she managed to find good, solid stage work with producer Joseph Papp, the Public Theatre and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She made her film debut as Mrs. Scott in Conrack (1974), then went on to earn an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Bell in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots. After a brief fling at series TV with the 1978 Jack Albertson sitcom Grandpa Goes to Washington, Sinclair enjoyed a six-season (1980-86) run as Nurse Ernestine Shoop on Trapper John MD. Her later weekly TV stints included Ohara (1987) and Me and the Boys (1994). Busy though she was on television, Sinclair always managed to find time for theatrical and film work (in the 1986 Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America, for example, she was seen as Eddie's royal mamma). Madge Sinclair died of leukemia at the age of 57, not long after completing work on the TV special A Century of Women.

Trivia: Originally from South Carolina, actor Paul Benjamin made his film debut in 1969 as a bartender in Midnight Cowboy. After a small role in Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes, he did television work throughout the '70s. A few notable exceptions involved small parts in Gordon Parks' biopic Leadbelly and Don Siegel's prison film Escape From Alcatraz. He fared better on CBS in the TV adaptations I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gideon's Trumpet. He got his first major starring role in the HBO movie The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains, based on the novel by Robert E. Burns. On the big screen during the '90s, Benjamin worked with some well-known directors. He appeared in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, Robert Townsend's The Five Heartbeats, Bill Duke's Hoodlum, and John Singleton's Rosewood. On television, he appeared in the 1994 pilot episode of ER, which led to his recurring role of homeless man Al Ervin during the next few seasons. Benjamin also worked on the American Masters documentary of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ralph Ellison, which aired on PBS. After 2000, he appeared primarily in small independent films like Stanley's Gig, The Station Agent, Deacons for Defense, and James Hunter's 2004 drama Back in the Day.

Trivia: Tough-guy American actor James Luisi could usually be found playing cops or plainclothes detectives. Luisi spent four (1976-80) years in the role of Lt. Doug Chapman on TV's The Rockford Files, later repeating the characterization (now promoted to Captain) in two Rockford TV-movies of the mid-1990s. On daytime TV, he was seen as Phil Wainwright in Another World. James Luisi's TV resumé also included the roles of garage owner Harry Foreman in Harris and Company (1979) and police lieutenant Marciano in Renegades (1983).

Trivia: Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Zakes Mokae was for nearly twenty years one of the top stage actors in South Africa. Despite the many racial barriers inflicting his part of the world, Mokae, who is black, was applauded with equal fervor by audiences of all races. His first film role was a Haitian in 1967's The Comedians. Though retaining his South African citizenship, Mokae made most of his screen appearances in international productions. He was also a frequent visitor to U.S. television, usually cast as a doctor or scientist; conversely, in 1978 he played the convict friend of imprisoned baseball whiz Levar Burton in the made-for-TV biopic One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story and in 1991 he was seen as a gunslinger in Parker Kane. After essaying the politically volatile role of Father Kani in Cry Freedom (1987), Zakes Mokae found it necessary to move to America permanently.

Trivia: Black supporting actor, former juvenile, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: American actor/singer Walter Woolf King was the son of a wholesale whisky salesman. Upon moving with his family to Salt Lake City, young King began singing in Mormon churches; leaving school after the death of his father, the boy decided to make singing his full-time avocation and headed for vaudeville with his friend, pianist Charles LeMaire (later an Oscar-winning costume designer). Making his Broadway bow in The Passing Show of 1919, King became a popular light baritone in several musical comedies and operettas of the '20s. He was then billed as Walter Woolf, but later switched to Walter King, until settling on his full three-barrelled name in the late '30s. King's first film was Warner Bros.' Golden Dawn (1930), but this starring moment was blighted by negative publicity about King's voice, over which the actor sued Warners. After a return to the stage in Music in the Air, King came back to films, though seldom as a star. Modern audiences know King best from his second-lead appearance in Laurel and Hardy's Swiss Miss (1938) and from his two Marx Brothers films, A Night at the Opera(1935) (in which he played villainous opera star Lassparri) and Go West (1940) (in which he was a villain again, albeit non-singing). Working with success in radio in the '40s, King was less lucky in films; he was reduced to B-pictures at such studios as Monogram and PRC, permitted to play leads only because the younger male stars had gone to war. Tired of his lackluster film career, King became an actor's agent in the late '40s, accepting only small, sometimes unbilled movie character roles for himself; he did however host a moderately popular 1950 TV talent show, Lights, Camera, Action. In the '60s, King, now greyer and stockier, found himself in demand for good supporting parts as stuffy corporate types, as in the 1968 Rosalind Russell picture Rosie. In the months just prior to his death, Walter Woolf King was seen around Hollywood in the company of Della Lind, who four decades earlier had played his wife in Swiss Miss (1938).

Trivia: American movie stunt man John McKee began accepting acting roles somewhere around 1945. Though his name is not listed in The Baseball Encyclopedia, we can safely assume that McKee had some pro baseball experience of some sort. He was seen as a ballplayer in such films as It Happens Every Spring (1949), Three Little Words (1950), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Pride of St. Louis (1952), The Big Leaguer (1953) and The Kid From Left Field (1953). As late as 1978 he was still in uniform, playing Ralph Houk in the made-for-TV One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story. John McKee was also on call for military-officer roles, notably in the war films The Gallant Hours (1960) and McArthur (1976).