Michael Krenn - Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department, 1945-69

BLACK

DIPLOMACY

First published 1999 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Krenn, Michael L., 1957

Black diplomacy : African Americans and the State Department, 19451969 /

Michael L. Krenn.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7656-0380-2 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-7656-0381-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. United StatesForeign relations administrationHistory20th century.

2. Afro-American diplomatsHistory20th century. 3. Afro-AmericansPolitics and

government. 4. Race discriminationUnited StatesHistory20th century.

5. United StatesForeign relations1945-1989. I. Title.

JZ1480.K74 1999

353.130973dc21

98-29529

CIP

ISBN 13: 9780765603814 (pbk)

ISBN 13: 9780765603807 (hbk)

Eight years ago I published a research note dealing with African-American ambassadors after World War II. At the time, I was immersed in research on my second book dealing with U.S. policy toward Central America in the postwar years, and so I suggested at the end of the note that this was a subject worthy of further study. I soon decided that it was time to put my money (and research) where my mouth was and I embarked on the present project. It was a daunting prospect. I had spent the first dozen years of my career focused on U.S.-Latin American relations. My knowledge of African-Americans and U.S. foreign policy was slight. It was obvious that I would need the help of a good many people. Fortunately, I found that help in abundance. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people and institutions who assisted me with such vigor and interest.

A small army of archivists made the research for this project a pleasure. The staffs of the Amistad Research Center, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, the Special Collections at the Mugar Memorial Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, the Department of Special Collections of the University Research Libraries at UCLA, the John F. Kennedy Library, the Richard B. Russell Memorial Library, the National Archives, and the Yale University Library, were all incredibly helpful in ferreting out the needles of this gigantic research haystack. At the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Michael Womack, Brian McGwire, and Michael Spangler provided valuable assistance, and allowed me access to a number of collections not fully archived. Regina Greenwell at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library pointed me to several collections I might have overlooked and never blinked an eye at my hundreds of declassification requests. The Harry S. Truman Library staff, particularly Dennis Bilger, Sam Rushay, and Randy Sowell, helped me sift through boxes of records. David Haight of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library turned me on to several avenues of exploration, including the Unfinished Business exhibit at the 1958 Worlds Fair. Thomas Jefferson Jr. and Gloria Jackson from the Department of States Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Civil Rights were thorough and friendly in answering my requests for information. At the USIA Historical Collection, Martin Manning pointed out some fascinating material. Unable to arrange a trip to the Institute and Special Collections at the MIT Libraries, I nevertheless managed to get all the information I needed due to the efforts of Elizabeth Andrews. Charles Kennedy of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program at Georgetown University was very forthcoming with help and provided funds for my interview of Terence A. Todman.

Several colleagues undertook the task of reading through chapter after chapter of the draft manuscript. David Schmitz, Carol Anderson, Brenda Gayle Plummer, Gerald Horne, Cary Fraser, and John Rossi all gave up immense amounts of time to offer their expertise and criticisms. The readers selected by M.E. Sharpe, Walter Hixson and Thomas Borstelmann, offered very helpful suggestions and criticisms, as well as identifying a number of problems and errors. Any problems remaining, therefore, must be attributed to my failure to heed some of their suggestions.

I would also like to thank the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at the University of Miami for providing research and travel money for this project. Funding was also provided by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and the Harry S. Truman Library Institute.

Peter Coveney of M.E. Sharpe showed consistent and real interest in this project almost from the beginning. He offered much needed encouragement many times during the publication process.

BLACK

DIPLOMACY

As World War II drew to a close, the annual report of the SmithsonianInstitution of 1945 chose to include a reprint of a 1944 article by S.L. Washburn entitled, Thinking About Race. The basic thrust of the article was that race was a strictly anatomical concept, having nothing to do with language, religion, nationality, or social habits. It was specious, Washburn continued, to try and relate intelligence and race. More untenable was the idea of a pure race, and he made this point with a biting conclusion: Below is an analysis of one race. Race: Pure Nordic. Location: Nowhere. Method: Imagination. Result: Nonsense. The article was, as its author noted, quite timely, since, Recently the subject of race has been lifted from comparative obscurity to the headlines.

Washburns article, while informative and entertaining, was unintentionally misleading on at least two major points. First, the racial issue had never existed in comparative obscurity for millions of African-Americans. Face to face with the problem from the day the first African slaves were brought to the American colonies, black Americans had, since the end of the Civil War, coped as best they could with an American society which consigned them to second-class citizenship. It was not until the 1930s, and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, however, that a growing number of African-Americans began to equate their own struggle for civil rights with the worldwide battle of people of color against colonialism and racial discrimination. As the civil rights movement in America intensified during World War II and the years afterward, so too did the interest in foreign affairs. The beliefs that color was an international issue; that colonialism, apartheid, and racist attitudes overseas could not be divorced from domestic issues of segregation, disenfranchisement, and racial inequality; that the United States, to have a truly representative foreign policyone which would signify to the world, especially Africa and Asia, that Americas talk of freedom, equality, and justice for all was something more than mere rhetoricneeded a black voice and presence in the Department of State and Foreign Service, all combined during the post-World War II period to force the African-American community into thinking about race in new and dynamic ways.