Clifton R. WhartonU.S. Postage Stamps Commemorate Distinguished American Diplomats Wharton was born in Baltimore and raised in Boston, where he practiced law from 1920 until 1923. He then moved to Washington, DC, where he worked as an examiner at the Veterans Bureau and as a law clerk at the State Department. In 1925, after taking and passing the rigorous Foreign Service exam, he became the nation’s first black Foreign Service Officer. After a series of postings that included Liberia, the Canary Islands, Spain and Madagascar, Wharton became consul general in Portugal in 1949. In 1953 he became consul general in Marseilles, France. In 1958, with his appointment as U.S. minister to Romania by President Eisenhower, Wharton became the first black diplomat to head a U.S. delegation to a European country. In 1961, Wharton was appointed ambassador to Norway by President Kennedy; during his confirmation hearings he was praised as a "highly skillful, understanding and tactful diplomat."
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During a distinguished career that spanned nearly four decades, Clifton R. Wharton, Sr. (1899-1990) was the first black Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State. While he was not the nation’s first black ambassador, Wharton was the first black diplomat to become ambassador by rising through the ranks of the Foreign Service rather than by political appointment and the first black diplomat to lead a U.S. delegation to a European country. 