Guys, I must admit that back in the 70s and 80s, I learned zilch about black people in Europe in school pre 20th century and certainly as a child I tended to equate "black" with "American", too. I should hope it's better now in terms of the curriculum, not least because we have far more ethnicities in our classes but also in general, but personally, I found out about black people in European history post school and partly via historical novels, partly via non-fiction books in areas of my interest.