William Henry Hunt (diplomat)

Engraving adapted from photo of William Henry Hunt

William Henry Hunt (1863–1951) was an African-American diplomat, one of the few blacks in the United States diplomatic corps (foreign service) during the 19th century.

Born into slavery in Tennessee, Hunt moved north where he was educated at Williams College. He was befriended by Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, who hired him as an aide for his 1897 consular posting in Madagascar. Hunt was appointed to succeed Gibbs there, and went on to serve at posts in France, Portugal, Guadeloupe and Liberia, retiring in 1932. He settled in Arkansas, where he became active in law and politics.

Life

William Hunt was born into slavery in 1863 in Tennessee, which was occupied from 1862 by Union troops during the American Civil War. He was of mixed race, as was his mother, whose father is believed to be a white planter who served as vice president. Through a series of lucky encounters, he acquired a patron and was educated at Lawrence Academy in Massachusetts. He enrolled as one of three African-American students at Williams College in Massachusetts in the 1880s.

During this period he met Ida Alexander Gibbs about 1889. She introduced him to her father, Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a judge who was appointed as United States Consul to Madagascar in 1897 and hired Hunt as his aide.

In 1904 Hunt married Ida Gibbs (1862-1957) in Madagascar, where he had been appointed to succeed her father. She had been educated at Oberlin College and was a friend of W. E. B. Du Bois. Ida Gibbs Hunt and Du Bois worked together on the Pan-African Congresses held in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1923 in London, she gave a talk on "The Colored Races and the League of Nations."

Hunt served in the United States diplomatic corps in Madagascar, France, Portugal, Guadeloupe and Liberia, retiring in 1932. His later career included law and politics in Arkansas.

Claude McKay refers in his novel Banjo (1929) to a "Negroid" consul working at an American consulate in a "town near Lyon," France (likely intended to refer to Hunt). McKay was part of the Harlem Renaissance.

Further reading

• "A Black Power Couple in the Early 20th Century", The Root
• BlackPast.org - Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt
• Oberlin College Archives - photograph of Ida Alexander Gibbs Hunt
• William Henry Hunt Papers, Howard University Archives
• Mixed Race Studies - Adele Logan Alexander, Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin, University of Virginia Press, February 2010.
• "Husband and Wife Duo Paved the Way for Blacks in Diplomacy", NPR, 10 February 2010