There are claims that Lt Walter Tull, England-born, was the "first" black officer in the British army (in 1917).
I draw your attention to Dr James S Risien Russell, a professor at University College London from the 1890s, born in British Guiana (now Guyana) and educated in Scotland. He was a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1908. The RAMC drew the colour line and refused the black doctors John Alcindor (graduate of Edinburgh University, 1899) and London Hospital graduate (1914) James Jackson Brown when they volunteered in the 1914-1918 war. Doctors were always officers and Brown (and a colleague, name not recalled by my informant) refused to serve the RAMC as a sergeant. It was through Dr Brown's son that I heard the name Risien Russell as a black London doctor.
Russell, like Tull, was light-skinned. Russell was widely respected in the medical profession and regarded as an authority.
I wrote his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. His photographs (one in a group of whites which does show his complexion; one a portrait pose) are in Queen Square and the National Hospital (London, 1960) and can be seen on my website page 010 (put Jeffrey Green Historian into your search engine and click on the right hand side to see that page).
There has also been a suggestion that a son or sons of Dr Minns, onetime mayor of Thetford in the mid-1900s, served in the RAMC. I have not checked dates in the medical reference annuals.
I believe it is important that however much recognition Walter Tull deserves, claiming a "first" somehow diminishes Dr Russell and indeed the entire subject of black British history.
Thanks for your attention
Jeff Green
"African Americans in Britain 1850-1865" is the title of my talk to be presented at Senate House, London University, on 4 December 2012. No charge.
6 to 7.30. Room S261, second floor.
My "Coleridge-Taylor A Centenary Celebration" booklet of 32 pp inc 21 illustrations costs £4 + £0.50p UK postage - order from Sean Creighton, 6 Oakhill Road, LONDON SW16 5RG