by Anne Edwards
She saw as her main job the promotion of greater American business interests in Ghana and the encouragement of America’s assistance in the development of the economies of African countries. She instituted monthly discussion meetings among the executives of the Ghana-based American companies, and worked to pitch Ghana’s opportunities in the business of fisheries, construction and agriculture to Americans looking for foreign investments. She took an active part in programs to set up more child-care centers and to teach mothers how to improve their children’s diets on little money and limited food supplies and was a familiar figure in Accra’s large and influential Market Women’s Association meetings.
Because Ghana is a matriarchal society, men are most often the laborers and women their overseers.* Women manage the farms, own the fishing boats and run the fleets of open-sided vanlike taxicabs, known as “mammy wagons.” In such a country, Shirley had no problem being taken seriously as a diplomat. And she enjoyed her role immensely. “She’s got these people right in the palm of her hand,” one American remarked. Another was overheard to comment at a reception, “You’ve got to give it to her; she always manages to say exactly what they want to hear.”
The least successful of her endeavors in Ghana was her relationship with some of the Americans on her embassy staff. “She wasn’t used to the management of a group—least of all a group of individual professionals, each of whom was used to taking responsibility for an area of operation,” Bache explains. “She did not know how to put her staff in positions where they could function with maximum effectiveness in support of her. I honestly don’t think it ever occurred to her that by moving into the center of any activity and any contact with Ghanaian officials, she was making it more difficult for her officers to be continuously effective with those contacts.”
“She had a pretty good right-hand man, the deputy chief of mission, Jack Linehan,” William K. Rosner of the staff recalls. “She left most of the administering to him. Jack was a very capable foreign service officer.” On Linehan’s arrival in Ghana, Shirley told him, “You’re the pro, I expect you to run the show, but I want to know what’s going on.” Linehan took her at her word. “I found myself working with a person I admired and with whom I enjoyed working,” he commented.
“The embassy staff was a sort of slaphappy crew,” Rosner continued. “We got out and did just about everything there was to do in Ghana. We traveled to the neighboring countries when we had the time. In the evenings, we entertained almost every night in each other’s homes or went to parties at the homes of other diplomats. Every national day called for a party and a reception. Quite a bit of drinking was done. There were no indoor movie theaters, they were all outdoors. The one I used to go to had a big tree off to the right of the screen, which usually cast a shadow on the picture.”
With Shirley’s talent for nesting, her family life was maintained along with her official duties. Construction was begun on a swimming pool (paid for by the Blacks), a Boxer pup was added to the household and Shirley learned how to cook Ghanaian food. Charles was away frequently on company matters, but Susan was at hand, and mother and daughter were often in each other’s company. Susan attended many functions with Shirley and remembered an afternoon party at Peduase Lodge given by Ghana’s commissioner for foreign affairs, Lieutenant Colonel Kwame Baah. The lodge is “an imposing white structure situated in the Aburi Hills. . . . Guests could swim, play tennis, billiards or ping-pong. . . . Lori, visiting us over the Christmas holidays, suggested [we] watch the table tennis games in the indoor pavilion . . . We found a large appreciative crowd and at its center a spirited match between mom and the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China. The play was rapid and a credit to both sides, but at game’s end, the victory was Ambassador Yang’s.”
Later that same afternoon, Shirley played a losing game of chess with the counselor of the Soviet embassy. Relations were good among the various embassies. The Soviets hosted a film party for the staff of the American embassy; Shirley reciprocated by inviting the Soviets to view some of her old movies; the Chinese ambassador paid a unique courtesy call (to his surprise, instead of offering him tea or coffee, Shirley served hot bouillon soup); and within a month of her arrival Susan began to date an attractive young man, Roberto Falaschi, a first secretary at the Italian consulate and son of the Italian ambassador to Uganda.
Each embassy celebrated its national holiday with a large reception. To commemorate Independence Day, Shirley decided on holding two events: one, a picnic for all the Americans residing in Ghana (about twenty-five hundred at the time), and the other a formal reception at her residence for the staffs of her own and the more than forty other embassies.
William Rosner remembers “something really odd at the picnic. It was the ambassador standing up on a podium while [a recording of) a very patriotic talk she had made somewhere in the United States—probably at an Air Corps base, because in the background there was the sound of fighter jets zooming overhead—came over the loudspeaker system. The speech was about what it means to be an American—something you could probably not get away with on any day of the year except the Fourth of July, and it was rather well received by the American colony [about one thousand had attended]. But it was bizarre for her to stand there at attention listening to her own speech.
“The formal Fourth of July reception was held that evening. I remember being at several staff meetings with the ambassador to discuss preparations. Rather than serve the normal little French hors d’oeuvres and the things people passed around at cocktail parties, she wanted this to be an all-American party in every respect, with typical American food served. The menu was to include hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad and corn on the cob, and she was insistent that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—which she saw as a typically American snack—also be served. [Numerous jars of peanut butter duly arrived and were given to the Ghanaian kitchen staff.]
“I remember cruising down the buffet tables and picking up something to eat—a hot dog here, some potato salad—and then seeing a couple of large metal trays, almost like cookie sheets but a little bit deeper—great big ones. In them was this soupy green mixture and something murky lurking on the bottom. I didn’t take any. I just sort of looked at it and shook the tray discreetly to try to figure out what it was. Some of the Ghanaians, to be polite, tried to spoon it out on their plates. I saw them staring down at the green globs which were swimming on their plates, running over on their food.
“Later, we realized that in a former British colony like Ghana, if you say jelly, you’re referring to what Americans call a gelatin dessert. The kitchen staff had followed her instructions exactly and put down a layer of sliced white bread on the cookie tins, spread the peanut butter over them and then topped them with slabs of lime gelatin. When they put this out in the tropical climate of Ghana, the [gelatin] began to melt into a sort of green soupy mess thickened slightly by the oozing peanut butter. No one was really quite sure what it was, but I think they thought it was all typically American.”
Ralph Graner, who was assigned to the embassy during Shirley’s entire term of office, felt that she “respected the professionalism of those who worked for her, thus—in my view—bringing out the best in them. . . . She kept herself carefully informed of all that went on. . . . She expected to and did take responsibility for major decisions, usually—but not as an automatic matter—accepting the advice of her staff. She read great quantities of briefing and other material, seemingly retaining all the detailed information for great periods of time. Most evenings she went home with a full briefcase of things to read there.”
She fell under grossly unfair attack when a widely publicized rumor accused her of seeking to purge her staff of blacks in key positions, notably Reginald Ingram, deputy executive director of the Agency for International Development. Shirley had in fact written to James Pope of the Bureau on African Affairs in the State Department to urge the department to “do what is possible to ensure that blacks and other ra
cial minority groups continue to be well-represented in Embassy assignments. There are political advantages to our posture in Africa if our posts continue to include personnel drawn from minority groups.” Pope, when asked to comment on Ingram’s recall, said that it was the result “of an economy drive and had absolutely nothing to do with the Ambassador.”
Recounting her own experience in Africa with the race problem, Shirley told a journalist, “I don’t think black Africans are racist. Within a week after I arrived in Ghana, I no longer noticed whether an individual was black or white. The blacks don’t seem to notice color either.” She also reminisced about a time when she was nine years old and vacationing in a cottage at the exclusive Desert Inn in Palm Springs, California. Bill Robinson came down to teach her a new dance number for the film Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. “When he arrived I asked Bill what cottage he was staying in. ‘I’m staying across the road, above the drug store,’ he told me. . . . It wasn’t until years later that I understood why.”
She went on record “as being strongly in favor of majority rule in both Zimbabwe and Mamebia,” and added, “I’m for an end to apartheid in South Africa as rapidly as possible. . . . My hope is that by getting the black nationalists and the whites directly affected—plus the leaders of other black countries—to sit down and talk, they’ll be able to avoid a bloodbath if the talks fail.”
After a moment’s pause, she commented, “One thing that upsets me about my own country, and may even trouble some black Africans, is that we Americans don’t seem to have heroes any more. Everyone is being cut down. When I was little girl I had many heroes. I met Eleanor Roosevelt when I was nine years old and I think she influenced me, got me interested in human rights and human dignity for all people. I admired [aviatrix] Amelia Earhart for getting out on her own and doing something women hadn’t ever done before.”
Ghana had one woman hero, Justice Annie Jiagge, internationally known for her work in the fields of law and human rights. Ghanaian women held many senior government positions in medicine, journalism, the arts, finance and law. Besides Shirley, there were three other women ambassadors in Ghana. Her sex did not make her unique, but her personal style and charisma set her apart. Her success as a career woman was much admired in a country where “women’s liberation banners draped the dusty streets of even the most remote village. . . . Liberation is not freedom from work—it is freedom to work,” she was quoted as saying. In such a female-oriented society, Charles’s role as the husband of the ambassador was fairly nebulous. As Shirley’s tour of duty progressed, his business trips became more frequent, but, as Susan says, “he retained his love, support, and pride in mom’s work.”
“The only thing I ever saw [Charles Black] doing,” William Rosner observes, “was cleaning out the swimming pool [at the residence.] He used to run one of those nets over the top of it and pull out insects and palm fronds and things like that.”
In the summer of 1975, Susan, now twenty-seven and a neophyte author, and Roberto Falaschi announced their engagement. They were married October 8. The union received much coverage by the paparazzi in Italy and brought about a brief revival in that country of the sale of Shirley Temple dolls and dresses. A new Italian recording of “On the Good Ship Lollipop” was made, and it sold well enough to make the Italian charts.
Rosner, who dealt with all visas to the United States, remembered that shortly after their marriage “the Ambassador’s daughter and her husband showed up at my office with their passports. Now, of course, Ambassador Black’s daughter had an American passport, but at this time she also had an Italian diplomatic passport which she was entitled to as [Falaschi’s wife.] She gave the passport to me and said, ‘Would you please give me a tourist visa?’
“I explained that I could not issue her a visa because American citizens are prohibited from receiving American visas. It became evident to me that she was applying for [a visa] on her Italian passport so she could use [a diplomatic passport] to enter the United States. I told her very politely, ‘I can’t do this, it’s against the law.’ I [later] had a phone call from the Ambassador asking me to please issue her daughter a visa. I explained to her that it is illegal . . . [It was] a delicate situation [and] I phoned the State Department. . . She [soon] received a communication from the Department of State again citing the law. . . . The incident seemed to upset the Ambassador’s daughter . . . whenever I saw her again after that she was rather cold.”
But it was to be Henry Kissinger, not Susan, who would create Shirley’s most difficult diplomatic problem in Ghana. In March 1976, she received word that the secretary of state was planning a tour of African nations in the following month. The most important stop on his tour was to be Zambia, where he was expected to make a major foreign-policy address in which he would advocate black-majority rule while warning against foreign intervention. Ghana had not been included on his itinerary, and Shirley was determined that this oversight be rectified.
However, Secretary of State Kissinger’s presence in Ghana would have created a difficult problem of diplomacy for Acheampong’s regime. Ghana, along with Nigeria, had opposed the United States’ stand on Angola, and earlier, in protest, Nigeria had rejected the possibility of a visit by the secretary of state.* Now, this stronger, richer nation placed pressure on Ghana to back it up. Acheampong was in a quandary. On the one hand, he could not afford to offend the United States by refusing to welcome the secretary of state if he arrived in Ghana; on the other, he was not in a position to deny Nigeria’s request. Although this situation was made clear to Shirley, she pressed on until Acheampong relented and offered a welcome for Kissinger, shaded in cool terms.
The secretary of state was to arrive in Ghana on April 29, on an itinerary that also included Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zaire, Liberia and Senegal. At the outset of the tour, Kissinger believed that his ambassador to Ghana had cleared the way for a receptive state visit. But “[t]he Ghanaians . . . insisted that a mere cabinet member could not meet an exalted person [such] as [Acheampong],” Craig Baxter, the American embassy’s political officer recalls. “Kissinger’s insistence and Ghanaian stonewalling resulted in the cancellation by the Ghanaians of the visit.” The secretary of state was in flight when he received his ambassador’s notification that the Ghanaian government had withdrawn its invitation. Relations between the two countries were suddenly most delicate.
“The reason given is the poor health of General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong,” Robert Funseth, a State Department spokesman, told reporters traveling with Kissinger aboard the plane. “However,” he continued, “we recognize the many pressures that the government of Ghana has experienced from foreign sources. We regret that the visit has been cancelled.” Later, another official said that “the United States had been aware that Soviet diplomats were agitating among Ghanaian officials and students against the visit and that the U.S. planned to make a formal protest” the next day.
“Obviously, the climactic problem for Ambassador Black in Ghana,” Kenneth Bache says, “involved the aborted visit of Secretary of State Kissinger. . . . She had personally pushed him to schedule that visit . . . and the Ghanaians to invite him. . . . In hindsight, it was an error of political judgment to recommend the visit at that difficult time in the shaky Ghanaian military regime, and it was unfortunate that she made the project a personal issue for herself.”*
The secretary of state asked her to meet him in Monrovia, Liberia (a country the other side of Ghana’s neighbor, the Ivory Coast), the next day, April 30. Ostensibly, she would be attending a dinner given by Liberia’s president, William R. Tolbert. The secretary of state could not have been in too good a mood, for he had been ill with severe stomach pains following a Zaire state dinner of wild boar and leaves of manioc plants. At the end of her short stay in Monrovia, Shirley announced that she was being recalled to Washington “for consultations.”
A few days later, she received a letter from the State Department officially recalling her, and with it one from President F
ord requesting that she accept an appointment as chief of protocol. Bache remembers that she showed him the letter from the president “and remarked rather gloomily that it was not the kind of request from a president that one could decline. What she was really saying was that she was hurt at having been thought of for such an assignment rather than one dealing with substantive aspects of foreign affairs. . . . She had mentioned more than once, in gatherings with senior officers, that she thought she might be named the next assistant secretary of African affairs.
. . . Whenever she made trips back to Washington, she saw a glittering array of the administration’s top Cabinet officers, who always assured her of full cooperation in whatever she asked. But somehow the implementation nearly always fell through. I think she sensed, as we did, that she was thought of in Washington as too prominent to be snubbed, but not really to be taken seriously. It had to have hurt.”
Her last few days in Ghana were most uncomfortable for her and the Ghanaians. “I vividly recall a very awkward sort of vigil at the airport,” Bache remembers, “when all of us saw her off. She made no secret of her pain over the matter. The Ghanaians gave her virtually no send-off.”
Packed in her suitcases were her Ghanaian dresses, the head scarves, carved jewelry and gold bangle bracelets. But her kinship for Africa had grown truly deep roots. “Africa is calling out for understanding,” she told a reporter. “It is trying to make its voice heard in the West, just as we are trying to make our voice heard in Africa. All of us should listen to what is being said. . . . We are bound together in a complex web of interdependence.”
Charles was by her side as she boarded the plane. She stood erect and waved from the top of the stairs as she was about to enter the cabin. She smiled broadly enough for her dimples to show, but there were tears in her eyes. Susan, married to a diplomat stationed in Ghana, would remain. Her daughter waved back, and the former ambassador to Ghana disappeared into the U.S. Air Force plane.
