14 minute read
THE TIMES
Blessed are the Peacemakers
African Masters of Statecraft
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By Stephen G. Hall, Ph.D.
The recent events in Ukraine demonstrate the impact of globalization and diplomacy. The Russian invasion of a former East European satellite state has sparked a worldwide hot and Cold War. While Russia engages in a hot war against Ukraine, Western Europe, the European Union, NATO and the United States are using diplomacy and Cold War strategies to blunt the impact of the invasion and weaken the Russian economy. Throughout this conflict, diplomacy has been at the forefront.
The 21st century is a vast departure from the 20th. Today, more blacks and women are firmly ensconced in the upper echelons of U.S. foreign policy, from Avril Haines at Intelligence and Lloyd Austin at Defense to Thomas-Greenfield as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. While their presence is pathbreaking, it is not new. Blacks have long played a role in setting the diplomatic imperatives of the nation. Indeed, other than the military, diplomacy is one area in American life and in the world where blacks have found many opportunities for advancement. Diplomat Ralph Bunche encouraged this after World War II: “There are going to be all kinds of jobs [in the United Nations’ set-up] and Negroes should attempt to get jobs on all levels.”
Roots of Diplomacy
If we travel back to the 19th century, black diplomats were few and far between, but they existed. Well-known African American abolitionists, lawyers and college-trained individuals served in diplomatic capacities. Four of the early ministers and consuls were John Mercer Langston, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass and Richard Greener.
Richard Theodore Greener , U.S. Diplomat John Mercer Langston, U.S. Minister to Haiti
Courtesy Everett Collection
Henry Highland Garnet, U.S. Minister to Liberia
Photo credit: James U. Stead
One of the earliest diplomats, Langston was an abolitionist, lawyer, and college dean and president, who held undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oberlin College in Ohio. Denied admission to law school, he read law under Philemon Bliss and became the first black admitted to the bar in Ohio. He later became the founding dean of the law school at Howard University and went on to become president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University). Shortly after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Langston U.S. minister to Haiti. He also served as chargé d’affaires to the Dominican Republic.
Garnet was a prominent black abolitionist in the antebellum period (1830-1861) and a staunch supporter of emigration. He advocated for African Americans to emigrate to Mexico, the Caribbean or Liberia, although his efforts were cut short by the Civil War. He was appointed U.S minister to Liberia in 1881 but died less than two months after arriving in the country.
One of the best-known diplomats, Frederick Douglass, was an escaped slave whose story later captivated abolitionist audiences. He became a newspaper editor, abolitionist speaker, and subsequently one of the most prominent black leaders of the 19th century. After playing a leading role in publicizing and politicizing the abolitionist movement, he then turned his energies to direct action to abolish slavery. He took an active, albeit clandestine, role in supporting John Brown’s failed attempt to take over the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859. After the Civil War began, Douglass worked to pressure Lincoln to enlist black support in the war effort. He simultaneously pushed for the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation and the involvement of African Americans in the Civil War and was successful on both counts. In 1889, Douglass became the minister resident and consul general to Haiti and chargé d’affaires for Santo Domingo. Although Haiti achieved its independence in 1804, it was not recognized by the United States until 1864.
James Weldon Johnson, U.S. Diplomat William Henry Hunt, U.S. Consular Agent
Current Wars, 2022
Ralph Bunche, U.S. Statesman Andrew Young, UN Ambassador
Photo credit: Chuck Fishman/Getty Images
Douglass’ service to the nation was followed by that of Richard Greener. Greener was the first African American to graduate from Harvard University in 1870. After graduating from the University of South Carolina Law School, he was admitted to the bar in South Carolina. In addition to his role as a teacher and activist, Greener enjoyed brief success as a diplomat, having been appointed by President William McKinley as general consul at Bombay, India, in 1898. He later accepted a post as United States commercial agent in Vladivostok, Russia, a post in which he played a major role as an American representative in negotiating an end to the RussoJapanese War in 1905.
The 20th century opened up more opportunities for African Americans to participate in diplomacy. One of the most well-known diplomats was James Weldon Johnson. Johnson was a graduate of Atlanta University and was admitted to the Florida bar. He never practiced. law but instead worked as principal at the Stanton School, a high school for African Americans in Jacksonville, Fla. He is best known for his work with his brother Rosamond on the Negro national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” In 1906, Johnson became consul to Puerto Cabello in Venezuela. He later served as consular agent in Corinto, Nicaragua. While in Nicaragua, Johnson wrote his iconic novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Sherman, French & Co., 1912). During the 1920s, he became the first black executive secretaryof the NAACP.
William Henry Hunt, an exslave born in Tennessee, rose to become the longest serving black consular agent in the first half of the 20th century. Closely associated with Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a judge and state legislator from Arkansas (Hunt married Gibbs’ daughter Ida Alexander Gibbs in 1904.), Hunt served as clerk and assistant and then vice consul in Antananarivo, Madagascar, to Gibbs. Selected by Theodore Roosevelt to replace Gibbs in August 1901 Hunt went on to become consul to SaintÉtienne, France, and remained in the position until 1927. He assumed additional consular assignments in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, the Azores off of Morocco, and later Monrovia, Liberia. He retired in 1932.
By virtually any measure, the giant of 20th century statecraft was Ralph Bunche. A political scientist by profession, the native of Detroit and Ohio was educated at UCLA and Harvard and began his career teaching at Howard University, where he also served as dean of its political science department and conducted extensive research on the concept of race. His successful efforts to decolonize Africa and the
North Africa and the Middle East, a flashpoint of world conflict
Kofi Annan
Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State (2001-05)
Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State (2005-09)
Photo credit: David Cannon/Getty Images Caribbean from European rule began during his World War II service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Alger Hiss, an American State Department official, recruited him for planning what became the United Nations in 1945. In the UN’s early years, Bunche was its highest-profile representative, setting up the trusteeship program that would lead to independence for many African and Caribbean nations over the next 20-odd years and negotiating the first Arab-Israeli conflict that surrounded the creation of Israel (formerly Palestine) in 1948. Bunche’s efforts at negotiating a ceasefire earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. An activist and enduring symbol for civil rights at home and human rights abroad, he had more prestige than the U.S. secretary of state or ambassador to the UN, both positions he could have easily filled in a less race-centered society. According to the United Nations document, Ralph Bunche: Visionary for Peace, during his 25 years of service to the UN, “[Bunche] championed the principle of equal rights for everyone, regardless of race or creed. He believed in ‘the essential goodness of all people, and that no problem in human relations is insoluble.”
Following in Bunche’s wake, Andrew Young, chief aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and a former Georgia congressman, had some big shoes to fill when President Jimmy Carter appointed him as U.S. ambassador to the UN in 1977, the highest diplomatic post ever achieved by an African American. His brief two-year tenure was bathed in controversy, from his remark in 1978 that U.S. prisons held hundreds of political prisoners, which led to a failed congressional vote to impeach him, to his support for Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo in the formation of Zimbabwe (formerly apartheid Rhodesia), and finally his ill-advised meeting with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in violation of U.S. policy that no contact with the PLO would be made until it recognized Israel’s right to exist. Young resigned over the incident. He went on to serve two successful terms as mayor of Atlanta before
running a losing campaign for Georgia governor in 1990.
The legacy of African diplomatic achievement at the UN continued in 1997, when Kofi Atta Annan, a Ghanaian diplomat, ascended to the position of secretary-general, the first African black to hold the UN’s top post, culminating a 15year career at that organization. During his tenure, Annan concentrated on the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa and founded the UN Global Compact, which encouraged corporate social responsibility. His efforts won the Nobel Peace Prize for himself and the UN in 2001. Annan’s tenure as secretary-general ended in 2006, after which he served as founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation and chairman of The Elders, an international group founded by Nelson Mandela.
The U.S. State Department has been one of the few areas of the American government that has been inviting to senior black leadership at the top. The department can cite two African Americans as secretary of state, Colin Luther Powell (2001-2005) and Condoleezza Rice (2005-2009), both of whom had controversial tenures during ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, outgrowths of the domestic and global War on Terror during the George W. Bush presidency. During the Obama Administration, Susan Rice would continue the tradition of black representation by becoming the first female African American to serve as UN ambassador.
The current American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, comes from a storied 35-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, culminating in her service as assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2013 to 2017. Appointed to her current post in 2021 by newly
Linda Thomas-Greenfield
Photo credit: John Penney
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO Director-General
John William Ashe, Antigua-Barbuda Diplomat
inaugurated President Joe Biden, Thomas-Greenfield has thus far been preoccupied by the ending of the 20-year U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan in 2021 and the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, the first such act on the European continent since World War II. Her statement of the U.S. position: “[Ukrainian] President Zelenskyy, I want you to know that [the U.S. and the U.N.] stand with the people of Ukraine as you face down this brutal attack on your sovereignty, on your democracy, and on your freedom.” She has also criticized the People’s Republic of China for committing genocide against Uyghurs and detaining them in internment camps.
Thomas-Greenfield is not the lone African deciding matters of war and peace in the world. Other prominent figures, not quite as well-known to the general public, made or make their contributions daily, past and present. Among them:
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian American, is the first woman and first African to hold the top post of director-general at the World Trade Organization (WTO), an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, that regulates international trade between nations. The largest of its kind, the WTO regulates trade among 164 member states,
The United Nations, New York City
Phakiso Mochochoko, ICC Court Co-Founder Johnny Young, U.S. Ambassador
Photo credit: Bethesda Rotary Club
The U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C.
Haile Menkerios, UN Under-Secretary-General Diallo Telli, OAU Secretary-General Edem Kodjo
comprising 98 percent of world GDP. Okonjo-Iweala was trained as an economist at Harvard and MIT and rose through the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and the Nigerian government, where she was finance minister and minister of foreign affairs, to her current position, begun in 2021.
Winnie Byanyima attained the executive directorship of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which seeks to combat the worldwide HIV/ AIDS pandemic, in 2019. The Uganda native has a background in aeronautical engineering and distinguished herself in Ugandan politics, human rights, feminism and diplomacy and as executive director of Oxfam International, the British charitable organization dedicated to alleviating poverty.
John William Ashe’s status in international diplomacy was unfortunately marred by corruption. The Antiguan
Photo credit: La Nouvelle Tribune politician and diplomat rose to dizzying heights, serving as president of the 68th UN General Assembly, 2013-14, president of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Board in 2012, and Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the UN from 1995 to 2004. Ashe’s downfall came in 2015, when he was indicted by the U.S. for influence peddling over an illicit Antiguan real estate investment deal. He died in 2016 before the case went to trial.
Caribbean islands under British rule have achieved their independence from the Crown since the 1960s
Phakiso Mochochoko, a Lesotho lawyer, earned distinction in a variety of diplomatic roles, including Lesotho’s ambassador to the UN (1994), chairman of the Sixth Committee (Legal) of the UN (1999), and a founder of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the war crimes tribunal sitting at The Hague, Netherlands, established in 2002. The ICC is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Distinct from the UN’s International Court of Justice, aka the World Court, the ICC’s most controversial activity has been to investigate abuses by the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan, an action that was vigorously opposed by the Trump Administration.
Johnny Young, a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador, led the U.S. embassies in Slovenia, Bahrain, Sierra Leone and Togo under three presidents: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The native Georgian was raised in poverty in Philadelphia and earned his B.S. magna cum laude from Temple University in 1966. He died in 2021.
Haile Menkerios, an Eritrean diplomat, served as the head of the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU) and as special representative to the African Union, at the level of under-secretary-general from 2013 until 2018. Educated at Brandeis and Harvard, Menkerios was appointed by UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon, whom he also served as special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan. He was also assistant secretary-general for political affairs.
Diallo Telli, a Guinean diplomat and politician, helped found the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and was the first secretary-general of the OAU between 1964 and 1972. After serving as minister of justice in Guinea (1972-76) he was executed by starvation by the regime of Ahmed Sékou Touré at Camp Boiro in 1977. Telli was a widely respected international diplomat known for his dignity and good nature, and his execution contributed to growing international awareness of the abuses of the Touré regime.
Edem Kodjo, a Togolese politician and diplomat, served as secretary-general of the OAU from 1978 to 1983 and as prime minister of Togo (1994-96, 200506). Educated in France, Kodjo rose through Togo politics to become minister of finance and minister of foreign affairs before his ascension to secretary-general at the OAU. Known as a “brilliant academic,” he died in Paris in 2020.
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BAVUAL: The African Heritage Magazine’s mission is to explore the Afrocentric experience in world history, from the beginning of recorded time to the present. It is for anyone who is interested in understanding cause and effect in history from the perspective of a key race of people.
