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2010 Black History Month: Haiti 1869 Ebenezer D. Bassett U.S. 1st Black American Diplomat
Thursday, February 25th, 2010 @ 10:44 am | We Think
In 1869 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Ebenezer D. Bassett U.S. Minister Resident to Haiti in making him the first African American diplomat and one of the highest ranking black members of the United States government at the time.
Bassett, an educator, abolitionist, and black rights activist, was born October 1833 in Connecticut. It was during the mid-1800s, he attended college, becoming the first black student to attend the Connecticut Normal School in 1853.
Ebenezer D. Bassett was a teacher in New Haven, Connecticut where he met and became friends with Frederick Douglass a leading abolitionist. Bassett was the principal of Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth (ICY).
For eight years, Bassett in his role as the American Minister Resident dealt with cases of citizen commercial claims, diplomatic immunity for his consular and commercial agents, hurricanes, fires, and numerous tropical diseases.
As the Resident Minister in Haiti representing the United States, Ebenezer D. Bassett, managed diplomatic bilateral relations through gory civil warfare and coups d’état on the island of Hispaniola.
He died in November 1908 in Philadelphia.
Ebenezer D. Bassett served with meritorious courage, and integrity in post considered to be very important during that period of world history.
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