Michael Jackson:Today we remember the legend. 4th year Anniversary of his death.

For those too young to know which race he was, Jackson was black, not white.

He suffered from a skin disorder called Vitiligo, that gradually turned his skin into white patches. He used creams to even out his skin till the day of his death. Jackson, never bleached as most people thought. .. josephebongie blog, salutes the man who changed the face of music. You may be gone but your works live forever. Sleep well.

Few people, outside medical professionals and those with the disease, had heard the term vitiligo until Michael Jackson revealed in the early 1990s that the disorder was behind his skin turning brown to white

Lee Thomas' skin is betraying him.

His once brown, even complexion is now mottled with pale patches around his eyes and mouth, along his nose and on his ears; his arms, shoulders and chest are speckled and blotched.

"I'm a black man turning white on television and people can see it," says Thomas, an anchor and entertainment reporter for the local Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate. "If you've watched me over the years, you've seen my hands completely change from brown to white."

Thomas has vitiligo, a disorder in which pigment-making cells are destroyed. White patches appear on different parts of the body, tissues in the mouth and nose, and the retina.

"There is no cause. There is no cure, and it's very random," Thomas says. "I could turn all the way white or mostly white."

As many as 65 million people worldwide have the disorder, including up to 2 million in the United States.