The Foreign Service Journal, February 2009

30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 9 ov. 16, 2008, marked the 100th an- niversary of the death of Ebenezer D. Bassett. Unfortunately, almost no one in the Foreign Service has even heard that name, much less knows of his importance. But when President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him head of the American diplomatic mission in Haiti in 1869, it was more than a matter of patronage. Bassett’s appointment broke the racial barrier, making him the first black to hold the position of chief of mission for the United States. And his courage and integrity paved the way for generations of future African-American members of the U.S. diplomatic corps, culminating in the appointments of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as Secretaries of State. Bassett’s rise from obscurity as an educator and the grandchild of a slave to become the first black man to head a U.S. mission was implausible given the racial turmoil of the 19th century. But Bassett was no ordinary man. His parents were free blacks in Connecticut and leaders of their community who ensured that their son received the finest education possible. In something almost unheard of in the mid-1800s even for white students, Ebenezer Bassett at- tended college in his home state. He became the first black student to integrate the Connecticut Normal School in 1853, more than a century before the Supreme Court held in Brown v Board of Education that segregation in public schools was illegal. Building upon his love of learning, Bassett became a teacher at, and later principal of, the Institute of Colored Youth in Philadelphia. During the Civil War, he helped the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass recruit black sol- diers for the Union Army. This activism paid off when General U.S. Grant won the White House in 1868 and looked to reward his political supporters in the black com- munity. Bassett’s nomination to become minister resident to Haiti (the title “ambassador” would not be used in Amer- ican diplomatic service until 1893) made him one of the highest-ranking black members of the U.S. government. His accreditation to the “Black Republic” was no accident either. Though Haiti had gained its independence from France in 1804, it was not officially recognized by the United States until 1862. Southern resistance to a former slave colony becoming a nation had kept rightful recogni- tion at bay. But with the Union’s victory, it was time to take the next step: elevating the level of bilateral relations with the symbolic appointment of Bassett. A Delicate Touch Upon arriving in Port-au-Prince in 1869, however, Bas- sett found that his new home was also rent by civil war. The 36-year-old diplomat with no international experience was nonetheless one of the most powerful figures in the coun- try. Though he soon realized that much of the work of diplomacy involved intangibles, he also understood that his duties were “not so onerous as delicate,” as he wrote to his FS H ERITAGE T HE C OURAGEOUS D IPLOMACY OF E BENEZER D. B ASSETT T HE HEROISM , INTEGRITY AND CONCERN FOR HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE FIRST A FRICAN - A MERICAN DIPLOMAT TO SERVE AS A U.S. CHIEF OF MISSION SET A POWERFUL EXAMPLE . B Y C HRISTOPHER J. T EAL Christopher Teal, a Foreign Service officer since 1999, is cur- rently the public affairs officer in Guadalajara. Previous as- signments include Lima, Santo Domingo and Washington, D.C. His biography of Bassett, titled Hero of Hispaniola , was published by Praeger Books in 2008 and can be found at http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C35195.aspx. N