Mr. Ambassador; Warrior for Peace

Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good. Format is approximately 7.25 inches by 10,25 inches. xvi, 560 p. Illustrations. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Foreword by George P. Shultz. Preface by David L. Boren. This memoir of one of America's most courageous statesmen, Edward J. Perkins, is illustrated with 50 black and white photographs and 6 maps. Edward Joseph Perkins (June 8, 1928 - November 7, 2020) was an American career diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to Liberia, South Africa, the United Nations, and Australia. He also served as the director of the United States State Department's Diplomatic Corps. Perkins passed the Foreign Service exam in 1971. Through a satellite campus of the University of Southern California, he would later earn his master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in 1978, both of which were in public administration. Concerned with the lack of support for fellow black members of the Foreign Service, Perkins became a founding member of the Thursday Luncheon Group with John W.H. Gravely, a weekly support and advocacy group for black officers. During his appointment tenure, Perkins focused on improving communication between blacks, whites, and other ethnic groups in the country, holding integrated receptions, attending church services, and visiting South African towns and villages. He overcame South African black activists' initial hostility towards him through "carefully chosen shots" at the South African regime that demonstrated solidarity with the country's victims of apartheid, including attendance at the Delmas Treason Trial. "Apartheid South Africa was on fire around me", so begins the memoir of Career Foreign Service Officer Edward J. Perkins, the first black United States ambassador to South Africa. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan gave him the unparalleled assignment: dismantle apartheid without violence. As he fulfilled that assignment, Perkins was scourged by the American press, despised by the Afrikaner government, hissed at by white South African citizens, and initially boycotted by black South African revolutionaries, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His advice to President-elect George H. W. Bush helped modify American policy and hasten the release of Nelson Mandela and others from prison. Perkins's up-by-your-bootstraps life took him from a cotton farm in segregated Louisiana to the white elite Foreign Service, where he became the first black officer to ascend to the top position of director general. This is the story of how one man turned the page of history.