Peoples are governed by not by realities but by myths.
— J. A. Rogers, 1940
Clockwise from upper left: Thomas Frye, 1762, RCIN 604595; Johann George Ziesenis, 1761?, RCIN 403562; Allan Ramsay, 1762, RCIN 405308; Laurence Gahagan, 1818, RCIN 913891; Thomas Lawrence, 1789, NG4257
Introduction
Since the 1940s, there has been a myth consisting of continually-evolving claims around the ancestry, ethnicity, and racial identity of Queen Charlotte. These claims began as an antiracist contention by Jamaican-American author J. A. Rogers, who intentionally used the false premises of scientific racism to refute the concept of a “pure white race” promoted by segregationists in the United States and the Nazi Party in Germany. Over time, like the telephone game, these claims morphed as they were misunderstood, misinterpreted, and expanded upon into the varied beliefs that Charlotte was “African”, “mixed-race”, “biracial”, or “Black.” When examined in context and with factual historical information, the evidence does not support these claims.