Lionel Richie

His father, Lionel Sr., died in 1990. Read Less

On March 4, 2011, Richie appeared on NBC's Who Do You Think You Are? The program did research into Lionel Richie's genealogy and found out that his great-grandfather (the father of his mother's mother) was the national leader of an early African-American fraternal organization.

Lionel's great-grandfather was John Louis Brown (October 25, 1839 – September 8, 1931), the bi-racial (mulatto) possible son of the widowed 81-year-old American-Revolutionary-War-fighter Dr. Morgan Brown or his son, Judge Morgan Welles Brown. (January 13, 1758 - March 23, 1840). His mother was one of Dr. Morgan Brown's slaves Mariah, who in his father's final years on his farm in Tennessee was his live-in housekeeper and nurse. Born a slave just like his mother, the baby John Louis Brown's ownership passed to his father/much-older half-brother Judge Morgan W(elles) Brown (January 1, 1800 - March 7, 1853) after his father's death in 1840, as did the ownership of his mother. Despite attempts by his father Dr. Morgan Brown to free both John Louis and his mother Mariah in his will that had been written before John Louis's birth in 1839, John Louis was never freed. John Louis was, however, educated as per his father Dr. Morgan Brown's wishes in his will, and against the mores and the laws of the time. The educated John Louis became known as "Doc" and he took the Brown surname. Read Less