Thomas Jefferson Byrd
This celebrity goo was created by Scott Hardie.
This goo was worth a point in July 2026.
publication date: Friday, July 31, 2026 (part of July 2026)
category: 
Theater
clue: He wasn't a planter from Virginia. He was a Tony-nominated character actor who turned up in nine Spike Lee joints.
explanation: Byrd was nominated for a Tony Award in 2003 for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. He appeared in Spike Lee's TV series She's Gotta Have It and his films He Got Game, Clockers, Bamboozled, Girl 6, Chi-Raq, Get on the Bus, Red Hook Summer, and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. more…
intended difficulty: medium
solved by: Russ Wilhelm and Richard Slominsky
trivia: This goo was inspired by founding father Thomas Jefferson.
You're Not My Real Founding Fathers!: America loves its Founding Fathers, and the nation's 250th anniversary makes for a fine opportunity to celebrate them. But wait—who are these imitators? These are actors, and musicians, and authors, and athletes! Their John Hancocks are very similar, but these aren't the real Founding Fathers! Starting apropos on Father's Day, here are a whopping fifty goos to challenge your knowledge of patriotic trivia. Can you identify these fifty fake signatories to a Declaration of Independence that never was? With luck, you\ll hold these goos to be self-evident.Similar Goos
Euan Morton
He isn't a farmer from Pennsylvania. He's a Broadway actor known for playing two different British Georges, one of them diametrically opposed to this theme, and an audiobook narrator known for his interpretations of James Islington and Frank Herbert. Go »
June Blair
She wasn't a judge from Virginia. She was an actress who married into a TV-perfect 1950s family, complete with Ricky Nelson as the best man. Go »
John Witherspoon
He wasn't a minister from New Jersey. He was Ice Cube's weekday father, Kid & Play's annoyed neighbor, Robert Townsend's fast-food boss, Eddie Murphy's vamping victim, and a very animated granddad. Go »
Frances Dana Barker Gage
She wasn't a lawyer from Massachusetts. She was a universal suffragist and abolitionist who refused to sit on her fanny in the face of injustice, until an accident forced it. Go »
George Washington Carver
He wasn't a military commander from Virginia. He was an agricultural scientist and inventor, the arc of whose life—being born into slavery, witnessing race crimes, overcoming educational discrimination, joining the faculty of an esteemed school, devoting his career to teaching poor Southerners who spurned him how they could grow new crops like peanuts in soil that was depleted by cotton, and surviving until the eve of the post-war boom—inspires hope that America will spend its second 250 years fully embodying the principles that it established in its first. Go »
