Did Ancient Rome hire black citizens into their regular legions?

by Mr_Meowmers

I know that the Romans used auxiliaries and mercenaries from foreign cultures as they continued to expand their territories, but I always wondered if people of color (non-caucasian) were ever hired into the regular legions. I recently began to wonder this because in popular media, Roman legionaries were always portrayed as solely European caucasians. Just to be clear, I'm not a racist nor am I trying to invoke some kind of racial debate about Ancient Romans, I'm genuinely curious about this as I've never actually thought about it before.

Edit: Are the comments getting deleted? I tried replying to some only to find that all of them are gone :S

mimicofmodes