Contributions by South Carolinians in the Foreign Service

People born, raised, or educated in South Carolina have made important contributions to America’s prosperity and security as members of the Foreign Service community. Here are some examples from ADST’s oral history collection:

• The proud son of parents from Lady’s Island, Johnny Young joined the Foreign Service in 1967 and broke barriers for Black officers in the State Department. He served four times as Ambassador under three successive presidents. As Ambassador, he ensured regional humanitarian assistance while in Sierra Leone, pursued democratic reforms in Togo, coordinated American security interests in Bahrain, and helped guide Slovenia to NATO membership. The rest of his story is on ADST’s website.

• Joseph Segars was born and raised in Darlington County and joined the Foreign Service in 1970. In 1976, in the midst of the Soweto uprising, he became only the second Black American diplomat assigned to South Africa and the first to arrive with his wife and child. Segars, who went on to serve as Ambassador to Cape Verde, recounts in his oral history how he became a quiet symbol of integration and America’s policy opposing Apartheid.

• After his childhood as the son of a sharecropper in Marion County and studies at the University of South Carolina, Aubrey Hooks joined the Foreign Service in 1971. Before becoming a three-time Ambassador, representing the United States in the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Côte d’Ivoire, he worked as economic counselor in Tel Aviv during the first Intifada. He worked on economic assistance to combat Israel’s triple digit inflation, faced SCUD attacks during the Gulf War, and navigated Israeli-Palestinian tensions that seem torn from today’s headlines. Read his account here.

• Born and raised in Greenville, Broadus Bailey Jr. was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army in 1951. After serving with Allied Forces Central Europe in France, Bailey served as a provincial advisor in Vietnam. He then joined the foreign affairs community as the Army Attaché in Laos in 1972, working very closely with the U.S. Ambassador on assisting Laotian forces in their fight against communists. He went on to work as a military advisor in the State Department. Learn more about Bailey’s time in Laos and the aftermath here.

• After immigrating to the United States with her parents at age 3, Nadia Tongour was raised in Barnwell and joined the Foreign Service in 1980. She dealt with KGB attempts to place listening devices in the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow while working on the Soviet desk and helped secure U.S. funding for preservation of ancient Amerindian petroglyphs while serving as Principal Officer in Grenada. Read her full story on ADST’s website.