Blacks were both objects and subjects in diplomacy from the earliest times. Captives in the African slave trade, slaves producing crops for market, fugitives, abolitionists, emigrants, Unionists, they crucially shaped the domestic and foreign course of slavery and emancipation before, during, and following the Civil War. Probably three blacks, notably Frederick Douglass, were appointed consuls to Haiti and Liberia prior to 1900. Black newspapers largely supported the Spanish-American War but deplored the racist and imperialist attitudes and interests that fueled it.

African Americans simultaneously pursued domestic civil rights and global human rights. They opposed racial and colonial oppression through the Pan-African Congress, NAACP, Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and other organizations, even as their service in World War I, appeals to the League of Nations, and efforts supporting Africa's self-rule promised a freer world. Black military and civilian contributions to World War II catalyzed desegregation of the armed and diplomatic services, leveraging that promise. So did the fifty-member United Nations, launched in 1945 to foster the peace, security, dignity, and self-determination of all peoples. Ralph Bunche, the first black UN diplomat, negotiated the truce that ended the Arab-Israeli War in 1949. Among “official consultants” to the American UN delegation were NAACP representatives, who soon created a coalition of Third World delegates, nongovernmental organizations, and the black press. During the Cold War, the coalition called for decolonization; nonproliferation of nuclear weapons; prevention of regional wars, like the one in Vietnam; race, ethnic, and religious tolerance; and economic aid to underdeveloped nations. In addition, Amnesty International, despite “the domestic jurisdiction clause,” petitioned the UN Commission on Human Rights for intervention to free African American political prisoners. TransAfrica promoted affirmative action to recruit more blacks and other minorities into Foreign Service careers; policies to sanction apartheid and genocide in Africa; and ending the immigration ban for Haitian refugees.