Terence Todman

Terence Alphonso Todman was born on the thirteenth of March 1926 at Saint Thomas, in the United States Virgin Islands, one of thirteen children of Alphonso Todman, a grocery clerk who also labored at times as a stevedore, and Rachel Callwood, who worked as a house maid and laundress. From a household of modest means he set his sights early on a life of service, and he never forgot the small island that shaped him.

Drafted into the United States Army, he served in occupied Japan and rose to first lieutenant before completing his studies and earning a Master of Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in 1952. Passing the Foreign Service examination, he entered a State Department in which few doors were open to a Black man, and he resolved to open them by the sheer weight of his excellence.

Across four decades Todman represented his nation as ambassador to Chad, Guinea, Costa Rica, Spain, Denmark, and Argentina, and served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. In 1990 he became the first African American ever promoted to the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest grade of the United States Foreign Service — a distinction earned, not granted. Fluent in several languages, he married Doris Weston, with whom he raised four children.

He died on the thirteenth of August 2014, at Saint Thomas, the island of his birth. Terence Todman carried his people's dignity into the highest halls of diplomacy and left the door wider open for all who would follow. May his name be honored.