C. R. Wharton; Pioneer Black in Foreign Service

Clifton R. Wharton, the first black American career diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service to reach the rank of career minister and ambassador, has died at the age of 90.

He died Monday in Phoenix, where he resided.

Wharton rose through the ranks of the service in his 40-year career and ultimately was appointed ambassador to Norway in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.

He also was an alternate representative of the United States at the United Nations in the early 1960s.

Wharton was the first black to be assigned as minister to a non-black country, the first to attain the rank of career minister and the first to become an ambassador through the career service.

Born in Baltimore, he earned several degrees from Boston University and was the first black to pass the Foreign Service exam in 1925.

He soon was appointed vice consul and second secretary in Liberia, where Edward Dudley, another black, had been the first U.S. ambassador from 1948 to 1953.

From 1930 to 1941, Wharton served as consul in Las Palmas, Spain, and from 1936 to 1942 held four temporary assignments to Liberia as charge d’affaires.

He went on to serve as a consul in Tananarive, Madagascar, a maritime consul in the Azores, Portugal, and consul general and first secretary in Lisbon.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower named Wharton envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Romania in 1958. He retired in 1964.