I'm seeing some afrocentrics and "hebrew israelites" claiming "King James was black" (as in the KJV's King James), and although I know this is obviously false, it's one false claim I started seeing more commonly recently than before, so I got curious: Is the claim that KJ was black old in these BHI or afrocentric circles, meaning did anyone of significance in these movements ever say this before (as in the time period this subredit accepts questions about)? And on another note, I can even understand saying ancient egypcians, jews etc were black (at least they live somewhat close to large black populations, and it's harder to know how very ancient people looked like), but why King James? Is there any old folk legend about him being black or something or is this just arbitrary? I mean really, just google "king james black" and there are even books about it!
tl;dr - not true, not a new claim.
Very slightly longer answer - yup, a little bit, not a new claim.
Royal families were more 'multicultural' than we give them credit for after our most recent last century of nationalism. Any mixing-it-up with the Spanish (EDIT - also Portuguese) gives you a shot at Moorish distant ancestry, therefore DNA that came from, or passed through, some part of Africa, therefore 'black.'
This PBS Frontline documentary points out a good candidate about a century after King James I. The wife of George 3.0, during the American Revolutionary War, was remarked for her 'mulatto' features coming from Spanish/Moorish descent. Portraits and gossip column journalists would play it up, or play it down, as needed.
It is anachronistic to say King James or Shakespeare would perceive this through racial politics of the early 20th Century. Moors were foreign, therefore exotic/suspect, and good to cast as villains in plays, but they did not divide humanity neatly into 3 races with 1-drop rules.