Not sure if its exactly what you're looking for, but Ibn Battuta was a 14th century Moroccan (well Berber actually) scholar who traveled...everywhere. We are talking West Africa, China and everything in between. Here is the Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta

Also, you mentioned Othello. Sub-Saharan Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance was more common than you might think. Look at almost any painting than contains a crowd scene and you're bound to find a couple of African faces.

I would also say Marco Polo if half the stuff he said hadn't been stuff he made up.

Abram Petrovich Gannibal was gifted as a child to Peter the Great, Tsar, and later Emperor of All Russia. He went on to be a prominent member of the court, received education in Metz, France, and rose to the rank of a general.
He is a great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, who is considered to be one of the most important poets and authors in Russian literature. Pushkin was very proud to have partially African ancestry, and even attributed some of his hot temper to that.

Sorry, we don't allow throughout history questions. These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory.