Hugh Heyne Smythe (August 19, 1913 – June 22, 1977) was an American author, sociologist, diplomat and professor. He was the tenth African-American ambassador and the first to a Middle Eastern country.

Life

Hugh Heyne Smythe was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 19, 1913. He enrolled at Virginia State College, an HBCU, in 1932, majoring in sociology, getting his B.A in 1936. He acquired an interest in foreign affairs around this time, but his application to work for the State Department was rejected. He earned his M.A from Atlanta University the next year. He then worked as a research assistant at Fisk University, where he studied under sociologists the Robert E. Park and Charles S. Johnson, and later received a Rosenwald Fellowship to study at the University of Chicago from 1938 to 1940. At Atlanta in the 1940s, he was a research assistant under W.E.B. DuBois. Around this time, he met and then married Mabel Murphy.

In 1941, he began his doctoral studies in anthropology at Northwestern University. His graduate work was focused on the Garifuna, though he was denied a visa to Honduras in 1941 due to his race. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the military. After passing through basic training at Camp Hood, Texas, he moved on to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Though he originally told he was to be trained as a tank destroyer, he was actually trained as a gunner. He attempted to get a job at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Relations, but failed, instead getting a release from the army in the summer of 1943.

In 1942 he was a research associate at Atlanta University. In 1945, he earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern on ‘‘Patterns of Kinship Structure in West Africa’ under thesis advisor, Melville Herskovits, with funding from the Rosenwald Fund. He was also assistant director of research for the Negro Land Grant College Cooperative Social Studies Project (1944) and had teaching jobs at Morris Brown University in Atlanta (1944) and the Tennessee State Agricultural and Industrial University (1945-1946). He became deputy director of special research for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, working with W.E.B. DuBois, from 1947 to 1949. In 1948, he worked for Langston Hughes. The NAACP encouraged him to apply a job in foreign service, though racism prevented him from securing a job during his personal interview.

While working at a public relations and advertising firm in New York from 1949-1950, during which he was taking courses at Columbia University's East Asia Institute, he and his wife got appointments to teach in Japan. Hugh worked from 1951 to 1953 at Yamaguchi National University as a visiting professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and Mabel as the first woman professor at Shiga University. After returning to the U.S in 1953, he joined the Sociology Department at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and remained in this position until his death in 1977. From 1957 to 1958 he was in Nigeria on a Ford Foundation fellowship to conduct research alongside his wife Mabel for his upcoming book "The New Nigerian Elite". He later helped co-directed the Crossroads Africa program.

As the Kennedy administration was pursuing desegregation, Smythe joined the foreign service in the 1960s. From 1961 to 1962, Smythe was a senior adviser in economic and social affairs to the US Mission to the United Nations. He also served a tour as the US senior advisor to the National Research Council in Thailand. He was also a U.S representative to many U.N committees and conferences, such as ECOSOC, the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, the Human Rights Committee, the Status of Women Committee, the U.N. Social Committee, the U.N. Statistical Committee, the UNICEF Program Committee and Executive Board Meeting, and the First International Conference of Africanists, held in Accra, Ghana, in 1962. He was also a lecturer at the U.S Foreign Service Institue. Returning to non-governmental work, from 1962 to 1965, he taught sociology at Brooklyn College. He became a Fulbright Professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand from 1963 to 1964. In 1965 he was chief consultant to the Youth in Action poverty program in Brooklyn.

He was appointed as the United States Ambassador to Syria from 1965 to 1967. Anti-Americanism was rampant in Syria at the time, due to the relationship between the United States and Israel, Syria's rival. As Syria was one of the most pro-Soviet countries in the region, who frequently criticized racism in the United States, it was thought that his appointment would weight out of those arguments, though Syrian protests in front of the American embassy accused him of being a traitor to his race. Syrian-American relations were at a low point; just a few months before his arrival, the Syrian government expelled the U.S. embassy’s second secretary and another embassy employee over espionage charges. Despite being constantly surveilled, he helped increase United States Information Service programs, set up local health programs and other aid programs, as well as visiting all twelve of Syria's provinces. His tenure coincided with the Six-Day War and the severing of diplomatic ties with the United States. He later became notorious for the "Smythe Telegram" that he wrote during the increasing tensions before the war, where he demanded that the U.S. return to a pro-Arab foreign policy and said that the U.S. should ignore previous promises to Israel that Egypt would not be allowed to ban Israeli ships from transiting the Straits of Tiran.Hugh Smythe, Telegram From the Embassy in Syria to the Department of State, June 1, 1967, FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 19, document 117 He left the country on June 8, 1967 after Syria severed diplomatic ties with the US and became the ambassador to Malta. While Syria expelled the U.S embassy, he was able to secure an extension of the evacuation order.

He was later appointed the ambassador to Malta. He later returned to teaching at Brooklyn College. He also went on to be a consultant to the Department of State and the Congressional Black Caucus. He died on June 22, 1977

Works

Books

Journal articles

See also Smythe Biographical Notes Papers of Hugh H. Smythe and Mabel M. Smythe, circa 1895-1997, available at New York Public Library The "Smythe Telegram", Telegram From the Embassy in Syria to the Department of State, June 1, 1967, FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 19, document 117, pages 214-215

Hugh Heyne Smythe bio on history.state.gov

Notes

Further reading

References