Last month the U.S. Department of State launched their “Heroes of Diplomacy” series, designed to bring greater awareness to the domestic public about the diplomacy profession, and this week I’m honored to return to Foggy Bottom to speak about some of our past Heroes of Diplomacy.
One of my major initiatives for the Department and U.S. Embassy France was recovering the phenomenal story of the U.S. diplomatic community in France during the Great War’s early phases. The United States remained a neutral power when war broke out in1914, and while American diplomats were technically neutral until April 1917, living in and among the French meant that they negotiated unique situations daily—navigating as best they could through unchartered waters.
Among the many stories of how American citizens and diplomats placed in unprecedented situations went above and beyond the scope of duty or obligation is that of U.S. Consul at St. Étienne William H. Hunt, my nomination for #sportsdiplomacy hero extraordinaire.
I’ve written a bit about Hunt, including this Huffington Post piece in 2015. He was the rare African American consul in the entire U.S. Consular Service in the early 1900s, and the only one stationed in France when war erupted. Hunt was not, however, the first black American consul in France; Dr. George Henry Jackson preceded him as U.S. Consul first at Cognac and then at La Rochelle from 1897 until early 1914. Both men, however, used rugby as ways to interact and integrate with their local French communities—early examples of what we today call the people-to-people cultural exchanges that occur in and around the sports terrain: sports diplomacy (#sportsdiplomacy).
Hunt used sports in and outside of service. He organized sports competitions as fundraisers for St. Étienne war widows and orphans, and when most of the members of his rugby club (what became today’s RC St. Étienne) departed for the frontlines, it was Hunt who helped track down information on their whereabouts—and sometimes medical or prisoner of war status—for their families. Local French press accounts of the mid-1920s noted Hunt’s critical role in the region’s community fabric, one tightly woven during the Great War as well as through his rugby work.
Sports cannot save the world, but they can act as bridges across cultures and facilitate cultural (or technical) knowledge exchange through a shared love of the game. This is true today as well as a century ago, and I advocate for more work to be done on the role of athletes as sports diplomats.
To read more about Hunt and the roles played by the U.S. diplomatic community in France, 1914-1917, read my Office of the Historian narrative, “Views From the Embassy,” here (also via the www.history.state.gov Department History page).
