The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Women Ambassadors Series AMBASSADOR MABEL MURPHY SMYTHE (HAITH) Interviewed by: Ann Miller Morin Initial interview date: May 2, 1986 Copyright Ann Miller Morin (used with per ission) TABLE OF CONTENTS Bac ground and family Childhood in Atlanta College-educated parents, close family Family roots in West Africa Early reader and writer Spelman, Mount Holyo e, Northwestern, Wisconsin PhD School e(periences Segregation Large lac community, little contact with whites Lynching Husband*s non-acceptance by officer candidate school Sister a WAC officer Professional life (Academia, Lincoln -ni.ersity Tennessee State College Fort /alley State College E(ploitation of blac schools by white politicians 0oung writer in N0 Broo lyn College High school principal New Lincoln School 1apan -ni.ersity professor in Ha one Husband 2 professor in 0amaguchi NAACP 2 deputy director of research School desegregation 2 Brown .. Tope a 1 Africa 4roup leader of crossroads of Africa Co-author with husband of boo on Africa Recognition as Africanist New 0or Husband*s career with -S-N Daughter*s schooling Syria 1785-1787 Husband -S ambassador Coup d*etat Cultural perceptions Similarities of FSOs and Academicians Anti-Americanism of Syrians Syrian*s attitude towards blac s Demanding social life Archaeology Arab-Israeli War; Embassy e.acuation Malta 1787-1787 Husband -S Ambassador Impact of Moon Wal on Maltese -S Fleet .isits New 0or Editor for Phelps-Sto es Fund African tra.el African e(change and scholars program /iews on Blac English Ambassador to Cameroon 1777-1780 Nomination Illness and death of husband Confirmation hearings Swearing-in ceremony Arri.al in 0aounde Cameroon, Programs Cultural interaction AID programs Self-help projects Cameroon, Embassy Operations Management of residence 2 Social life Cultural acti.ities E.acuation of Americans from Chad Embassy functions Cameroon, Issues Clearance of -SIS films /otes at -N African point of .iew Showing of ?roots“ French 2 English language split Comments on President Carter Local reaction to a woman ambassador American business and in.estment Cameroon, Staff Deputy chief of mission Family liaison officer Impact of life o.erseas on foreign ser.ice marriage EAuatorial 4uinea 1777-1780 Cameroon, Andy 0oung .isit Post embassy e(periences Deputy assistant secretary in Bureau of African Affairs Professor at Northwestern -ni.ersity INTERVIEW ": A bassador S ythe, could you tell us a little bit about your fa ily, where you were born, and where you spent your earlier years, a little about your parents& SM0THE: I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the only member of my family to be born there. My parents were both from Camden, South Carolina. Dad went to li.e with an older sister in Boston when he was a youngster, and he graduated from high school in Boston, then went to Hampton Institute for an agricultural course. Meanwhile, Mother went to Atlanta -ni.ersity, where she too a normal (which meant teacher preparation, course, graduating in 1707. One of her teachers was William E. Burghardt DuBois, and her fellow students included Walter White and 1ames Weldon 1ohnson. ": Where is Ha pton Institute& 3 SM0THE: In Hampton, /irginia. He was in the class of 1710. And after wor ing two years, in 1712, he went to the -ni.ersity of Wisconsin and was graduated in 1718. I guess it was 1712 that he went bac to Wisconsin, and he and Mother were married in 1713 when he was something li e twenty-nine years old. My eldest sister was born in Wisconsin, in Madison, and my second sister was born in O lahoma, after he had gone to teach at what is now Langston -ni.ersity. I was born on his second teaching job at Alabama State. It was then Alabama State Normal School, a teacherEs college, and itEs now Alabama State -ni.ersity in Montgomery. He stayed there for se.eral years, and when I was four he accepted a job with the Standard Life Insurance Company to organiFe and run their printing di.ision. He wanted to be a newspaperman, and he had majored in journalism. ": What was he teaching all this ti e& SM0THE: English. ": So he wanted to be a journalist& SM0THE: 0es. So we went to Atlanta, where my brother was born later. All four of us were born in different states. Before the Depression came, he saw trouble coming in the insurance company and left si( months before it failed and started his own printing business. That business is still in e(istence in Atlanta, and he ran it until he was eighty- fi.e years old. ": Did your other--well, she ,ept the ho e. She was a traditional-- SM0THE: She did some dressma ing and was always at home. After the last of us left-- there were four children--she spent a year as dean of women at a little college in 4eorgia, Fort /alley State College, and then decided that commuting to Atlanta was a little much and became what was called Guni.ersity hostessG at Atlanta -ni.ersity. She was the meeter and greeter and she also super.ised the dormitory matrons and too care of .isitors and so on. This was in the 1740s and 1750s and 1780s. She didnEt retire from that until she was se.enty-eight years old. She was also president of the Atlanta -ni.ersity Alumni Association, the national organiFation, for twenty-two years (she was a graduate of Atlanta -ni.ersity,. ": .hat/s 0uite unusual, isn/t it, for a wo an of that generation& SM0THE: Right. And especially during the time before ci.il rights got well established. A lot of this happened bac in the days when there was a great deal of segregation in the South and things were .ery often difficult because of that. ": 1f course. So you certainly had heavy overtones of acade ia all through your growing up& 4 SM0THE: 0es. As a matter of fact, I should show you one thing. I thin I can get it Auic ly. IRecorder turned offJ . The -.S. Office of Education made a grant to Horace Mann Bond to do a study of African American holders of the Ph.D. which could account for their intellectual achie.ements. Dr. Horace Mann Bond selected Andrew Brimmer, who was the first blac go.ernor of the Federal Reser.e Board system, and Adelaide Cromwell Hill, a prominent Africanist at Boston -ni.ersity, and me, among the Ph.D.s he was loo ing into. One day Mother saw him and she showed him a copy of these papers. This is a copy of my motherEs paternal grandfatherEs Certificate of Freedom, and it is an unusual document. There were a number of free Negroes in that period, but .ery few with a documented tie to Africa, and this tells his genealogy bac to Africa and to England, because there was intermarriage in Africa with two Englishmen, Thomas Cor er and William Cle.eland--not, howe.er, mentioned in the Certificate of Freedom. ": J.H. Bec, an, Es0uire& Is that the one& SM0THE: No. Not Bec man--heEs simply a magistrate who too the affida.it from Col. Charles Kanapau(, a magistrate who new Andre Dibble. The intermarriage occurred when Thomas Cor er and William Cle.eland were in Africa. Thomas Cor er went to Sierra Leone in 1884 and sent his half-African son bac to England to be educated. One of his descendants married the Englishman, William Cle.eland years later. There is a not- too-apt attempt at translating the archaic language into todayEs patterns, and I ta e issue with some of it, but this is roughly accurate. But itEs an interesting document, and Dr. Bond was so struc by it that he sent 4eorge Bond, his nephew--a sociologist who was doing some wor o.erseas--and I am not sure whether 4eorge went o.erseas to do this wor just for Dr. Bond or whether he was already there--but he went into the British Museum and found in the library some documentary e.idence of the history of the relati.es and got in touch with a man who was doing the history of Sierra Leone, because the Banana Islands are in Sierra Leone. He got in touch with Christopher Fyfe, of the -ni.ersity of Edinburgh, who has written a complete history of Sierra Leone. I ha.e a copy of the short history. IsnEt that somethingL ": 5Reading docu entation7 8.he genealogy that Andrew Dibble, a free person of color, age thirty-si9, a tailor now residing in the town of Ca den, is the son of Mindah, the daughter of Bec,, who was the daughter of Catherine Cleveland.8 Isn/t that wonderful& 1807. SM0THE: IsnEt that mar.elousL ": Yes. Isn/t that so ething& SM0THE: And thereEs a great deal more. I went to the archi.es in Sierra Leone; the woman in charge at the archi.es was the wife of the Minister of Finance. She ga.e me documents with the names of these people on them, and there is one manuscript, a copy of which is in the British Museum, but another copy of which is in Sierra Leone, a real hand copy, about two inches thic , of appro(imately 200 years of the history of the 5 Cle.eland and the Caul er families. Cle.eland was the family name of Catherine, the first one who came here, but her mother was a Caul er, and the first ambassador from Sierra Leone to the -nited States was a Caul er.