When you’re posted abroad, I guarantee that some of your foreign colleagues will know more than you about American history, and they’ll know more than you about international relations theory and the structures of international affairs. . . . They will have studied American history—and lots of it. And you? You don’t want to get hosed by your foreign counterparts.
—Jack Zetkulic, executive director of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 2005
During the summer prior to my senior year in high school, my mother insisted that I learn typing and shorthand. I did not want to attend any summer school for fear of giving the impression that I needed to improve my grades. After all, I was a fine student, and the last thing I needed was to diminish my academic accomplishments. Turns out, yet again, she was right.
In the early 1960s when women graduated from liberal arts colleges, often the first question visiting U.S. government recruiters posed was, “Do you know how to type?” After I graduated from Simmons with a degree in international business, a Department of Army recruiter asked the same question, and I said, “Yes, I know how to type.” My family in Boston would have helped me find a job close to home, but there I would always be my siblings’ little sister. Instead, I took a job in Washington as a secretary in the Department of the Army.
That year in DC was less than exciting. My work was routine and absolutely boring. I lived in the home of Mrs. Ruth Johnson, originally from Malden, Massachusetts. She was the great-aunt of my sorority sister from Boston, Kathy Stewart. I paid fifteen dollars a week for a lovely room in her home at 67 Gallatin Street NW. My room was newly painted and attractively furnished with a single bed, a blue and white flowered bedspread, and one of those old-fashioned dressing tables with mirrors. When my folks visited Aunt Ruth’s home, which she owned by the way, they were very pleased. Aunt Ruth was one of the elevator operators at the State Department. She wore a stunning navy blue uniform with a white lace handkerchief in her pocket each day. I loved hearing her stories of the elegant diplomatic receptions when Angier Biddle Duke was the chief of protocol. These were the days before elevators were automated, and one of these lovely ladies controlled every elevator in the main State Department building. Today we rarely see these ladies unless there is a swearing-in ceremony or special events in the diplomatic rooms on the eighth floor of the department. I have been told three or four are still on the staff.
My parents were relieved that I was going to be in the home of a fine upstanding woman from Boston. They were ecstatic. I cannot say I shared their enthusiasm, but I was blessed to have been in such a welcoming environment. There was one major problem from my perspective. I was twenty-one and wanted to be independent. Living with Aunt Ruth was almost like living at home. One night I did not get home from work until 9:00 p.m., for I had gone to dinner with some of the other young women in the office. As I entered her home, Aunt Ruth was sitting in the living room. Clearly concerned, she wanted to know where I had been. I did not dare to show my frustration, although I was tempted. After explaining to her where I had been, I decided I would alert her to a possible late night out in advance. After it was clear I had no idea how to cook, Aunt Ruth offered to prepare my dinners if I gave her five dollars more a week. I did, and my life could not have been better. Despite the absence of total independence, I was working in the nation’s capital, surrounded by museums, theaters, the Kennedy Center, and the Arena Stage. During the summer Aunt Ruth entertained many of her Boston relatives on her back patio, including my friend Kathy and her parents. The barbeque menus contained far more tasty foods than I had in Boston. I relished visits from Kathy’s grandmother and Aunt Ruth’s sister, Esther Humphrey. Perhaps because I spent much time with my mother’s friends, I always felt more comfortable with those older than I.
I joined Aunt Ruth’s church, Peoples Congregational Church, and I remained a member of that church until I came to Orlando in 2003. My husband and I were married in that church.
After working a year in Washington, I accepted a two-year assignment overseas as a secretary in the political section of the American embassy in Paris. This second experience in France gave me an even broader view than I had in my controlled adolescence. My parents would never have allowed me to go to a nightclub. I never even went to a bar when I was at Simmons College.
In August 1965, very soon after I arrived in Paris, I saw this tall, elegant woman of color walking through the embassy. She was a Foreign Service secretary, but I thought she must be the head of the Economic Section because of the way she carried herself. She seemed to command whatever space she entered, and the stunning halls of the embassy in Paris added to her already arresting presence. After introductions, Mary Pearl Dougherty invited me to her home. She had a flat in Neuilly-sur-Seine. My apartment was in the same western suburb of Paris. During our first conversation, I learned she knew some of the same people in Boston my parents knew. Well, that was almost a marriage made in heaven. I’d been in France less than a week and I was so homesick. I could not wait to call my mother and father to tell them I met a women who knew Mrs. Boles, the wife of Boston’s top black architect, Henry Boles. Mary Dougherty also knew Enoch Woodhouse, a Boston lawyer, community activist, and one of the famed Tuskegee airmen. Again my parents and I celebrated the fact that I had met someone with a strong Boston connection.
Mary Pearl Dougherty, who was eighty-eight when she died in Washington in 2003, was often called “the black Perle Mesta.” Perle Mesta was known as the hostess with the “mostest” because of her elegant parties at her posts abroad and in Washington. Mary, too, was a gifted hostess. Her postings during a thirty-year career took her to Liberia, South Vietnam, the Central African Republic, Zaire, Germany, and Romania. She was a secretary at the embassy, but for me and many other young black Foreign Service officers, Mary was a surrogate mother with an ease in giving advice on everything from how to deal with being overseas and away from family during holidays to the right glasses to use at dinner parties to serve cognac and cocktails, especially the layered colors of pousse-café. (Many years would pass before my refined husband would enjoy his Rémy Martin VSOP in his special cognac glass.)
Before coming to Paris, Mary Dougherty had worked for Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History Month,” who took on a scholarly crusade to document African American life and history. In her way, Mary carried on Woodson’s work, “adopting” young Foreign Service staff and guiding their careers.
I had expected to be ready to go home after my first year in Paris, but, under Mary’s tutelage, I ended up staying three years. She took me to the American Church in Paris and the American Cathedral. She introduced me to several American military officers and their families. She introduced me to a number of the important people of all hues at the embassy. If I thought my life had changed from the exchange experience in Lyons, the entrance of Mary Dougherty into my life made the Lyon summer pale in comparison. With Mary as my mentor for the next thirty years, I became a more self-assured adult, and eventually a full-fledged career diplomat.
As time went on, Mary introduced me to a world more sophisticated than any I knew in Boston. I learned how to eat artichokes, mushrooms, and other international delicacies. I actually attended jazz clubs after midnight. I accompanied her to plays where the language was rather spicy. I was twenty-three years old, away from the cocoon of Boston, and living in Paris. One play, The Dutchman by LeRoi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, had one reference that was rather base. I turned to Mary with a puzzled look and asked what the phrase meant. “Do you really want me to explain?” she said. By her look, I knew, no, no. It’s okay.
Throughout my Paris assignment, my mother bought my clothes from the renowned Filene’s Basement discount store in Boston. Once, Mary knew I had been invited to an elegant cocktail event. She told me I needed what we called a basic, evergreen cocktail dress. I spotted this stunning red designer dress in the window of a shop along Faubourg Saint-Honoré, one of Paris’s chic streets. Mary was with me. She walked with me into the store and ordered me to try it on. She then said, “You have to buy that. I will pay for it with my American Express, and you can pay me back.” Buying a dress with a credit card was totally foreign to me at the time. Besides, it was $250. I could not buy a dress for that kind of money. I was making about $4,300 a year. Mary purchased the dress, and I wore it to many of the cocktails and receptions I attended for the next three years.
In Mary’s little Volkswagen bug, we traveled around the wine country of France and Germany with her dear friend Alice Lee, who often called me “Peck’s Bad Girl,” from the 1959 television sitcom.
During my time in Paris, the Vietnam peace talks were underway. I could not believe the delay in those talks because the participants could not decide on the shape of the negotiating table. There were anti–Vietnam War demonstrations in front of the embassy. I must admit, it was frightening to observe hundreds of people swarming the streets in front of the embassy before the post-9/11 barriers and concrete blocks were installed. I was impressed by watching the elite French riot force, Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (State Security Police Force), appear seemingly from nowhere and move hundreds of demonstrators with such precision from the embassy perimeter. The riot squad never seemed to use force nor tear gas but succeeded in moving the frequent demonstrators.
The Left Bank of Paris experienced student unrest during the mid-1960s similar to the unrest during the civil rights movement in America. While the objectives were different, the actions were similar. Undaunted by the unrest, Mary would drive to the Left Bank. The tires of her little car would hit loose cobblestones that students had thrown in the streets. Nobody threw stones at us, but the streets were littered with stones. She wanted me to see the demonstrations. I think she wanted to sensitize me to what American student activists were doing back home. She figured I had plenty of book knowledge, but I was far from streetwise. She, like my mother regarding the typing and shorthand skills, was absolutely right about my naïveté.
Here I was in Paris during the height of the civil rights movement, 1965–68. I have mixed feelings about my absence from the States during the nonviolent demonstrations that have allowed me and so many others to hold the positions we hold today. Despite not being home at this critical time in U.S. history, I might well have made a positive contribution. I was “different.” Honestly, if anyone said to me one more time during those years, “but you are not like the others,” I would have screamed. My French was more fluent than that of my white counterparts in that section of the embassy. These colleagues wanted me to go with them wherever they went on weekends. For those three years, I was their “friend” because I was their interpreter.
Many of the French citizens I met were genuinely curious about the life of Negroes in America. I was one of the few American Negroes they had met who communicated in their language. It is my hope that I might have helped change their misperceptions of America. Most of my French friends were curious about my family. Whenever I described my parents’ humble beginnings and my siblings’ accomplishments, they became even more intrigued. I merely stated facts about the Elam family in Boston. After these “reality checks,” I think many of the young French men and women I encountered revised the stereotypical images they had about American Negroes from print and television media.
Thus began my journey to bridging cultural divides. Although representing America was not my official duty, I began to make it my personal goal to let others know that there are many African Americans who are well read and educated, speak multiple languages, and communicate effectively across cultures. As I advanced to middle and senior levels in my diplomatic career, I realized that every action I took often impacted the views of my host country colleagues about the United States.
Even though I was away from the United States at the height of the civil rights movement, I kept abreast of everything that transpired in my hometown of Boston. On April 4, 1968, as I drove up the Champs Élysée toward my studio apartment in Neuilly, I learned of Dr. King’s assassination. I pulled off on Avenue Victor Hugo, parked the car, cried, and sat mesmerized as I listened to the news. In the days to come, I found out my hometown of Roxbury was also in the news, for the black population, devastated by King’s assassination, reacted as those living in many other large urban areas reacted. I read in Time magazine how the mayor of Boston, with my brother, Judge Harry Elam, drove through the streets to calm the crowds and managed to minimize the damage that would have been incurred had riots broken out. In essence, I had not lost touch, for my family kept me informed of all that transpired during that difficult period in America’s history. How blessed I was to have met Dr. King when he came to speak at the American Church in Paris.
After another Sunday service at the American Church in Paris, Mary Pearl Dougherty and I saw a young woman listening to the organ postlude in the back of the church. Born in New Jersey, of African American and German descent, jazz organist Rhoda Scott had come to Paris to study under a well-known classic organist and teacher, Nadia Boulanger. Not many people sit in the back of a church and listen to a classical piece as she did. We engaged in conversation, and the next thing we knew Mary invited both of us to her home the following weekend to help prepare a dinner. Mary threatened to leave Rhoda and me alone in her flat to prepare dinner. Neither Rhoda nor I had any idea of how to prepare artichokes, much less ratatouille (ra-ta-too-eeh). We were near panic until Mary relented and agreed to teach her novice chefs. Near the end of our vegetable preparations, Mary asked Rhoda to make lemonade. Rhoda asked if I could help her make the lemonade. I thought, how naïve, but I helped her make lemonade. Later in the evening, Mary and I went with Rhoda to the Left Bank Club Saint-Germain-des-Près. Rhoda, the featured artist, was playing the organ. When she finished her set, I jokingly said, “If you want a recipe for a glass of water, I will gladly find one for you.” Rhoda was a master of the organ. A friendship of forty-five years began, and Rhoda played at my seventieth birthday party in 2011.
Rhoda has performed at the Newark Jazz Festival, the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall for the Newport Jazz Festival after its move to New York. On the West Coast, she has performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival and at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. Yet Rhoda is another example of artists of color who have earned more recognition overseas than in their own country. The French love her. She’s an icon in France. Rhoda has been honored by the French government as a commandeur, the highest grade of its Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2014 she received her second master’s in music with honors from Rutgers University.
In July 2007 Paule Sassard-Serusclat, my close friend from France, met me in the charming town of Nuits St. Georges to celebrate Rhoda’s birthday. Rhoda gave yet another of her stellar performances. I was thrilled to share this experience with Paule, who had known Rhoda by reputation but had not met her.
Mary Dougherty continued my education by introducing me to another respected woman of color. Dr. Margaret Just Butcher, the oldest daughter of Dr. Earnest Just, a famed cell biologist, was probably the most erudite person I ever knew. She must have been in her fifties when I met her. I was twenty-three, perhaps twenty-four. This woman was a political appointee, but as the assistant cultural attaché in the American embassy in Paris in about 1966, she was revered by all of the artists and writers in Paris. She held one of the most coveted cultural assignments in Paris. She was respected because of her literary prowess. For me, it was mind boggling to be in the presence of this African American woman who had been a Fulbright scholar and was noted in our history for her work with the writer, philosopher, and educator Alain Locke, the first African American Rhodes scholar. Known for his promotion of black art and culture, Locke is recognized as the dean of the Harlem Renaissance. Just before he died in 1954, he had been working on his greatest work. He trusted the bright daughter of a close friend with his research, and Margaret took on the task of completing Locke’s The Negro in American Culture, a reference book on African American contributions to American culture.
One of Margaret Butcher’s contemporaries, Gerri Major, was a longtime senior staff editor for Ebony magazine and society editor for Jet magazine, writing from Paris. There were enough African Americans living and visiting in Paris at the time that Ebony thought it was worth opening an office in Paris, its first overseas bureau. Charles Saunders was the director. He collaborated with Gerri for their weekly Paris-focused society column. Writ large and holding their places in the academic realm, Gerri and Margaret reminded me of pictures you see of the grande dames of culture, seated in velvet chairs and holding walking sticks. They exhibited a certain gravitas that only they could because of their life experiences and knowledge of American literature and the arts. Both of them liked to drink cognac. As Saunders was preparing to leave Paris, he noted in his column that an admirer had just sent a case of Rémy Martin VSOP to Gerri’s apartment overlooking the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Gerri and Margaret would sit with their little glasses of cognac and hold court at Dr. Butcher’s apartment on the Left Bank. Never once did I see them intoxicated, but when I took one sip of the stuff I thought, “Oh, my heavens, this is really strong stuff.” This sheltered kid from Boston was in a whole new world.
When Ebony held a reception for the opening of its office on rue Georges V, all the elite of Paris, black and white, cultural icons and theatrical artists, attended. Once again I was enthralled to be in the presence of these writers and artists. There were lots of references to James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and other Negro artists who had been welcomed in Paris. Many African American writers were part of that expatriate renaissance. They were able to live and create with respectability and pride outside the United States. It was an eye-opening time for me in ways I had never imagined back in Boston. In 2013, on a return visit to France, I took the opportunity to join Ricki Stevenson’s Black Paris Tour. This Stanford grad with a master’s in history had been a television network news anchor-reporter who later spent six years as an international travel reporter. Her Paris tour is well documented and filled with history. It certainly opened my eyes to a wealth of information about black Americans who lived, worked, and created masterpieces while in the Paris of old. There is a brand new crop of artists and writers there today. As I remember those times in the 1960s, I’m listening to Mighty Mo Rodgers’s “Black Paris Blues,” in which he sings about the City of Light welcoming black artists, writers, and musicians. His song is a reminder of how music delivers messages that speeches and conferences do not.
Into that setting came my mother and father for a Paris visit in 1966. These two elderly black folk visited their youngest daughter for almost three weeks. My dad served in France during the First World War and was amazed to revisit sites he remembered. He recognized many of the buildings on the rue Royale. The French government insisted that historic façades could not be altered whenever interior renovations took place. Daddy beamed with joy to see them. We even took a trip to London. When we arrived in London, my geography and history lessons came alive. At the Tower of London, I saw the Beefeaters in their traditional uniforms. I saw the historic sites I had read about in school. Suddenly history became interesting. My teachers had told me history was relevant to our daily lives, but I wasn’t really convinced until this trip. To see this senior couple viewing these scenes lifted my heart. Fortunately, my mother’s journal from this trip still exists.
I planned a gathering in my Neuilly studio apartment to introduce my parents to my friends. My mother took one look at the invitation and said I should not use the words “cocktail party” on the invite. She said, “I am a deaconess at St. Mark Congregational Church. Deaconesses do not attend cocktail parties.” (My father was never as much of a churchgoer as my mother. He would attend Easter and Christmas services.) I changed the wording on the invitations from a “cocktail party” to “a welcome gathering for my parents.” I also had to hide a case of Scotch I had purchased, for I wasn’t quite sure how my parents would feel about their daughter having that much alcohol in her residence. Forty-four guests attended. I quickly found out I had much more to learn about hosting a reception. I mixed every drink, as my father had done with his highballs at home. I put a cherry in every one of the drinks. One gent came into the kitchen and asked me to remove the cherry from his scotch and soda. With great embarrassment, I apologized and decided I would not put a cherry in every drink after that.
I had alerted Mary Dougherty that my parents were not likely to drink much alcohol because I had never seen my dad have a glass of wine. He only drank highballs, and that was usually on very special occasions. My mother would sip a bit of brandy, but she always told me it was for medicinal purposes. Much to my surprise, when asked, they told Mary they would “sample” her wine. They not only sampled the wine, they each drank a full glass. I was dumbfounded.
On another night, Mary took my parents to the Lido to see a show with scantily dressed women on stage. I was shocked because they seemed to enjoy the performance. Remember, these were the parents who gave me the impression that they were very straitlaced.
While in Paris, I met Olive and Everett Kelsey, a classy young Negro couple, thanks again to Mary Dougherty. Everett was one of the first young Negro bank officers on Chase Manhattan Bank’s overseas staff. They had two toddlers, a real family unit. Seeing them warmed my heart, much the same way I am uplifted when I see the Obama children. Sadly, Everett died at the very young age of thirty-one, shortly after their return to the United States in 1968. Olive became a widow at age thirty-one. Her lovely daughter, Holly, a Middlebury College graduate, was killed in a car accident when she was only twenty-four, in 1981. Her son, Everett, resides in Los Angeles. Olive hosts me twice a year in her New York apartment when I attend the board meetings of the Institute of International Education. Despite the tragedies of her life, Olive is one of the most centered women I know. An avid reader of all things dealing with international affairs, literature, history, the arts, music, and sports, she is a captivating conversationalist An English teacher and museum executive, Olive taught English for two years in the Peoples’ Republic of China. She continues to educate those fortunate enough to meet her. She has weathered life’s challenges, never expresses bitterness, and continues to share her incredible knowledge with those smart enough to listen.
Until her passing in 2016, I stayed in touch with another friend from Paris, Virginia “Ginger” Cohen. While a professional colleague, Ginger was an unpretentious American jazz aficionado, artist, and jewelry creator. Ginger and Mary often took me to a place called the Living Room, between the Champs-Élysées and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where Art Simmons, an American pianist, played and collected much of the material for his Paris Sketchbook column for Jet magazine.
Pearl Richardson and Cecile “Cy” Richardson, both deceased (2012 and April 2015, respectively), were among my surrogate parents when I was truly “green behind the ears” in Paris. While I was unsophisticated in the ways of the world, they took me to exhibits and helped me adjust to life abroad. Pearl and Cy figure prominently in my becoming “finished.”
With $750 from my income tax refund, I enrolled in a Paris finishing school. I learned how to walk and how to hold my purse, gloves, and a glass of champagne in my left hand while keeping my right hand free to greet people. I learned how to carry on conversations in international settings. I went to finishing school classes after work for five or six months. It was absolutely fun for me. I was there with all these razor-thin women who were trying to become models. But there were a few of us who just wanted to learn decorum and etiquette. Graduation included a formal dinner. We wore our long-sleeved gloves and gowns. The dinner table had more forks, spoons, and knives than one could ever imagine, but they prepared us for the experience of a formal sit-down dinner. Pearl and Cy enjoyed teasing me from time to time as they asked, “Harriet, are you finished yet?”
Pearl and Cy sat at the table with Virginia Cohen and Rhoda Scott at my seventieth birthday event in 2011. Much to my delight, they announced, “We think you’re finished, Harriet!”
Another couple to welcome me to Paris, Jeannie and Gabriel Jacir, lived upstairs in the same Neuilly apartment complex where I resided. During a welcome dinner at their home, I ate the entire first course, thinking that was it. Three more courses followed. I dared not show my ignorance and sampled a bit of the remaining courses, all of which were delicious. I also learned about the intermezzo, when sorbet was served between courses to clear the palate.
Fortunately, I lived right downstairs. Aunt Ruth might not have been present in Paris, but the Jacirs certainly took her place. Whenever I came home from work in the spring or summer, I noted they were perched on their upstairs balcony to welcome me. If I ever thought I might have a romantic interest, I could depend on Jeanne and Gabriel being aware of the time the gent arrived and when he left. Did I say I thought I would find real independence when I moved to France?
I am not so sure I was “finished,” but I was finished with Paris. Despite three wonderful years living and working in “the City of Light,” the work was not challenging. I decided I should leave the U.S. government. Upon my return to the United States, I went to New York City for an interview with the Ford Foundation.
Richard Nixon was elected president in November 1968, two weeks before I went for the Ford Foundation interview. One day after that interview, Senator Edward Brooke called me. My brother Clarence, a senior advisor to the senator in Washington DC, had mentioned to the senator my intention to leave the U.S. government. The senator had another suggestion. He noted, “There is a possibility that you could work in the White House.”
As a result of that conversation, I worked for six weeks at the president-elect’s transition office in the Hotel Pierre in New York City. Then, with amazing speed, I moved to the White House, where I worked from January 20, 1968, until August 1971. For two and a half years, I worked in the West Wing for President Nixon’s special assistant for appointments. Dwight Chapin (yes, one of those who did not escape the Watergate-related scandal and prison sentences) was my boss. My desk was directly outside the door to the Oval Office. To my right was the entrance to the Cabinet Room. I had a “front desk” at the White House, as the Boston Globe reported. That exposure significantly enhanced my self-confidence. Daily contact with cabinet members, heads of state, foreign ministers, leading businessmen, academics, and journalists taught me not to be intimidated by anyone.
When I moved to Washington I took up residence in the studio apartment that my brother Clarence had rented in Capitol Park–Southwest DC. Again my brothers saved the day, since I did not need to go apartment hunting when I returned to DC from New York. It was just what I wanted. My work at the White House meant I had little free time. I did not need any more space, and Clarence left it totally furnished. I still have Clarence’s lounge chair in my Orlando residence. Furniture made in those days was sturdy.
One evening I went to pick up my mail at the Capitol Park complex, where I met Yvonne Franklin. We struck up a conversation because she looked so much like my dearest friend, Lorene Douglas McCain. Thus began another friendship of more than four decades. She recently retired as a senior flight attendant for United Airlines. She holds a special place in my heart. She knew me long before I ever held a diplomatic title. We were both rather naïve as to the harshness of the world, for we were grounded in Christian values that always look for the best in others. One of the first of our many trips together was to Nassau and a delightful visit with Mrs. Elma Jackson, a model and hairstylist and the one who taught etiquette to the “Teenettes.” Oh, did we need that training. Mrs. Jackson, who had striking gray hair, was a tall and imposing figure. When she walked in a room, she owned it. She was another of the black female role models in my life.
As I watched television news coverage of the guests arriving at President Obama’s first state dinner in honor of the president of India, I recalled my delight as I attended the “after dinner” performance for a state dinner in honor of France’s president Georges Pompidou during the Nixon administration. White House staffers responsible for the event knew I had lived in Paris for three years prior to my work in the West Wing. They wisely thought I would be particularly honored to attend. I was. My date for the evening was Judge David Nelson of Boston. It was truly a thrill of a lifetime. The White House photographer, Ollie Atkins, gave me photos to mark that occasion.
Of course, not all major social events at the White House were for happy occasions. President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed away March 28, 1969. Heads of state came from around the world to pay traditional condolence calls. Most of the guests entered the Oval Office from the Roosevelt Room. For some reason, President Charles de Gaulle did not. I remember this imposing French general standing in front of my desk as President Nixon came out to greet him. Their entire conversation was in English. I was absolutely flabbergasted. During my three years in Paris, I got the distinct impression that de Gaulle did not speak English.
In December 1969, only a month after the My Lai massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops, the nation held its first draft lottery since World War II and ended college draft deferments. Many had thought the unpopular war was winding down when in the spring of 1970 the president gave a television address announcing his expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Within days, students on college campuses across the nation took to the streets in protest. On May 4, after several days of unrest and violence in the college town of Kent, Ohio, troops of the Ohio National Guard fired sixty-seven rounds, killing four students and wounding nine others. The shots wounded some who were not part of the protests. Some protesters had been unruly, throwing rocks at the guardsmen, yelling insults, and ignoring orders to disperse. A presidential commission later concluded, “Indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.” Just weeks after the deaths at Kent State, Neil Young’s “Ohio,” with its mournful repeated line “Four dead in Ohio,” was played nationwide.
More than five million students organized a national campus strike that closed at least a hundred colleges and universities. Among my photos from my time in the White House is one of a historic meeting that President Nixon had with the presidents of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). A few days after the shootings at Kent State, I received a call from my niece, then a student at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. She indicated that the HBCU presidents were concerned about Nixon’s military campaign into Cambodia and our continued involvement in the Vietnam War. These presidents feared similar protests and loss of young lives if President Nixon did not meet with them. I contacted John Ehrlichman, then chairman of the White House Domestic Council, and suggested such a meeting. Ehrlichman followed through with a written recommendation to the president for that meeting. I am happy to report the meeting took place. That session was one example of the public’s shift against the war that prompted Nixon to withdraw his military invasion of Cambodia and bring the fighting in Vietnam to an end.
I also had an unexpected discussion on desegregation with President Nixon as I delivered documents to the president prior to his meeting with Negro leaders to discuss the issue. The New York Times of March 21, 1971, under the headline “Nixon Meets with G.O.P. Negro Aides,” reported my one-hour “chat” with the president about my experiences in the Boston school system and my attitudes on integration of all public schools and related racial issues.
I have no idea what impact our chat had on the president, but soon after that he announced his plan for a comprehensive review of all desegregation court rulings since the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. His administration would carry out the law of the land, despite violation of Supreme Court rulings by seven southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Southern leaders met with Nixon’s cabinet officers in the Roosevelt Room, across the hall from the Oval Office, and with the president in his office. The president also traveled to New Orleans to carry his message to the South. George P. Shultz, Nixon’s secretary of labor, who would serve as secretary of state from 1982 to 1989, wrote an op-ed piece about his involvement in Nixon’s effort that ran in the New York Times on January 8, 2003. Shultz credits the president with defusing tensions and ending segregation peacefully. Times columnist Tom Wicker, in his book One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream, writes, “The Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years, or probably since.”
During these years, I made two or three flights on one of the White House’s fleet of military planes. The food service provided by the navy chefs surpassed my limited experience flying business and first class on U.S. airlines. Of course, this was a working plane, so it was well equipped with the then-modern Selectric typewriters. When we headed to San Clemente, I had no idea we were flying into John Birch country. It was clear; I was a novelty for the townspeople each time I went out to dine with my fellow White House colleagues.
Working at the White House had its perks, but those perks came with some long days. In short, it was not the ideal work situation to encourage outside socializing. Each time President Nixon had a press briefing in the Oval Office, all of the West Wing staffers remained until the briefing or presidential message had ended and until journalists from the three major networks had retrieved and packed up all of their cumbersome equipment. It was not unusual for us to leave the West Wing at 11:00 p.m. or later. In fact, one evening a gentleman called after one of my many long days and said, “Harriet Elam, if you cannot have a friendly phone conversation because you are always so tired from work, you need to find a new job!” He was right. Actually, my feigned fatigue was really because I did not wish to speak with him, but already the diplomat, I used my work as an excuse to keep the conversation short.
I began to notice that my friends and extended family members enjoyed the special access I was able to provide for White House tours. Some “friends” liked such perks from me, and many were not genuine friends. I contemplated my future and decided that high-profile access to dignitaries and most senior government officials would not compensate for the constrained social life of a young woman in her late twenties. I decided it was time for me to move on.
In 1971 I resigned from my White House assignment to return to a more conventional U.S. government job in the State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs. Before I left, my mother and my brothers Harry and Clarence were invited to the White House to meet President Nixon. The brief visit on February 19, 1971, included a photo opportunity. My brothers received coasters and cufflinks and my mother a stunning brooch. Each time I look at the photo of my dear mother beaming to have been in the White House, I think of how thrilled she would be to know that Mrs. Marion Robinson, Michelle Obama’s mother, resided with the First Family in the White House.
The lasting treasures of my White House assignment are the photos, a letter from President Nixon, and another handwritten congratulation letter from Dwight Chapin. In the typed letter signed by the president, Richard Nixon expressed his appreciation for the “splendid job” I had done but also for “the ready smile and bright eyes that invariably greeted me outside the Oval Office which helped to make each day a sunnier one whatever the weather.”
The president, however, was not going to have many sunny days. The burglaries at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building on May 28 and June 17, 1972, led to the scandal that forced Richard Nixon’s resignation two years later. My former boss, Dwight Chapin, deputy assistant to the president during Watergate, would be convicted of perjury and would serve nine months in a medium-security federal prison.