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Walter C. Carrington (July 24, 1930 – August 11, 2020) was an American diplomat who served as the United States ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Senegal and Nigeria.

Carrington served as the U.S. ambassador to Senegal from 1980 to 1981. He was appointed by U.S. president Bill Clinton in 1993 as the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, where he remained until 1997. His ties to Nigeria were deep; he had married into a Nigerian family and had lived in three Nigerian cities since the late 1960s.

Career

Carrington graduated from the Harvard Law School (AB 1952; JD 1955). Upon graduation from Harvard, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, where one of his assignments was as an enlisted man with the Judge Advocate General Corps (Germany, 1955–57). Upon separation from the military, he entered a private law practice in Boston, Massachusetts; during that time, he also served as commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the youngest person to serve until that date. He held various positions in the Peace Corps from 1961 to 1971, serving as country director in Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Tunisia and then as regional director for Africa (1969–71). From 1971 to 1980, he was executive vice president of the African-American Institute.

Carrington served as the United States ambassador to the Republic of Senegal from 1980 to 1981. In 1981, he was named director of the Department of International Affairs of Howard University. He published several articles on Africa. He served as U.S. ambassador to Nigeria from 1993 to 1997. On September 1, 2004, Carrington was named the Warburg Professor of International Relations at Simmons College in Boston.

Carrington was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. In 1997, he received an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Humane Letters) from Livingstone College, North Carolina.

In 1991, Carrington published Africa in the Minds and Deeds of Black American Leaders (with Edwin Dorn). In 2010, he published A Duty to Speak: Refusing to Remain Silent in a Time of Tyranny, a compilation of his speeches supporting democracy and human rights in Nigeria during the Sani Abacha military dictatorship. He also wrote many Africa-related articles for national magazines.

References

1. "Walter Carrington, former US ambassador to Nigeria dies at 90", City Voice, August 12, 2020.
2. "BIOGRAPHY: The heroic life of Ambassador Walter Carrington", Per Second News, August 12, 2020.
3. Communication from Ambassador Carrington dated July 13, 2010.
4. Alao Abiodun, "BREAKING: Former US ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, dies at 90", The Street Journal, August 12, 2020.
5. Council of American Ambassadors Archived January 5, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Walter C. Carrington.
6. Married to Arese Ukpoma of Benin City, Nigeria, a medical doctor. Two children, Thomas and Temisan.
7. Chido Nwangwu, Interview with Ambassador Carrington, USAfrica Online.
8. Now named The Africa-America Institute, this New-York based organization works to improve relations between the United States and African nations.
9. "The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR WALTER C. CARRINGTON" (PDF). Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. 9 March 1998. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 June 2024. Retrieved 22 July 2024.

• Ambassadors of the United States to Senegal
• Ambassadors of the United States to Nigeria
• 1930 births
• 2020 deaths
• Lawyers from Boston
• Lawyers from New York City
• Military personnel from New York City
• Harvard Law School alumni
• African-American diplomats
• 20th-century African-American people
• 21st-century African-American people