William Henry Hunt (diplomat)

William Hunt was born in 1869 in Tennessee. He was of mixed heritage, as was his mother, whose father is believed to be a white planter who served as vice president.^[2] 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.^[3]

During this period, he met his future wife, Ida Alexander Gibbs around 1889.^[2] 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.^[3]

In 1904, Hunt married Ida Alexander Gibbs (1862–1957) at #14 N Street, NW in Washington, D.C.^[3][4] She had been educated at Oberlin College and was a friend and colleague 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."^[3]

Hunt served in the United States diplomatic corps, becoming the vice-consult of Madagascar in 1899 and succeeding his father-in-law as the consul in 1901. His next post was Saint-Etienne, France, where he was consul from 1906 to 1927. During his time there, Hunt gained a high standing among the locals for his diplomatic engagement and athletic activities, particularly through his role in establishing the sport of rugby in the town and running a rugby club. During World War I, he was responsible for the safety of American citizens as well as those of the Central Powers while the United States remained neutral.^[5] He would then serve in Guadeloupe, Portugal (the Azores) and Liberia before retiring in 1932. His later career included law and politics in Arkansas.^[3][6]

Claude McKay refers in his Harlem Renaissance novel Banjo (1929) to a "Negroid" consul working at an American consulate in a "town near Lyon," France (likely intended to refer to Hunt).^[7]

• "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
• Alexander, Adele Logan (2012). Parallel worlds : the remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the enduring (in)significance of melanin (First paperback ed., 2012 ed.). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3245-3. OCLC 793010738.
• "Husband and Wife Duo Paved the Way for Blacks in Diplomacy", NPR, 10 February 2010