Just a slight note on Dumas' father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.
Under legal technicalities, he was born a slave and records indicate he was even sold and repurchased by his father (A white French aristocrat of high standing).
However, he lived his entire life as a free man and was educated as an aristocrat. He served in the French republican armies, cleverly escaped the clutches of the Commission of Public Security, rose to general-in-chief of the French armies of the Tyrol, West, Rhine and others (in the western world, no black man would reach equivalent rank again until Colin Powell, a full two hundred years later), beat the Austrians in their own end of the Alps, saved the republic from several uprisings, and only ended his career with a full-blown argument with Napoleon in Egypt (after Napoleon had almost killed him and several other generals with an ill-advised march through the desert).
It would be technically correct to call Thomas-Alexandre Dumas a slave. But it would be a lot more accurate to call him one badass motherfucker.