Wesley T. Williams
- Actor
Wesley Williams was an African-American from Oakland, California, who
served time in the French Foreign Legion. According to Vincent Sheean's
Personal History (Doubleday Doran, 1935), Williams had "wandered away
from California to France, in a spasm of adolescent romanticism, and
over a café table in Bordeaux had met the inevitable recruiting agent
for the Legion." After being sent to fight in the Moroccan Rif Wars, he
deserted in favor of the Rif leader Abd el-Krim and met the malarial
Sheean, who was covering the late stages of the war for a New York
publisher. Sheean notes that Williams was 20 years old at the time,
which would indicate his birth date was sometime around 1905-6.