Amb. Howard Jeter

Amb. Howard Jeter, retired Career Minister of 27 years of distinguished career and wealth of experience, is the former U.S ambassador to Botswana (1993 to 1996) and to Ethiopia. He assisted them in transitioning to democracy.

Ambassador Jeter championed the peace and reconciliation as the President’s Special Envoy to Liberia, Director of West African Affairs, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs from 1996 to 2000. During his service at the Department of State, the Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, he specialized and dealt on issues such as the law of the sea. He also served as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Namibia from 1990 to 1993, the Charge d’Affaires in 1992, Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d’Affairs in Lesotho, where he held several political, economic, commercial, and consular positions in several appointments U.S embassies in Mozambique, Tanzania, Windhoek, Namibia.

To honor his achievements, Ambassador Jeter has received the following awards: Presidential Meritorious Service Award, State Department Superior Honor Awards, Senior Foreign Service Performance Awards, and Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Charles Diggs Award for the Promotion of U.S.-Africa Policy and the prestigious Bennie Trailblazer Award from Morehouse College.

Ambassador Jeter belongs to the Phi Beta Kappa, the American Foreign Service Association, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is multilingual. His languages include Portuguese, Swahili, and French. He is married to Donice, and they are blessed with two children Malaika and Jason.

Late Amb. George Haley

Former Late United States (U.S.) ambassador to Gambia and brother of Roots author Alex Haley, was the second African American to graduate from the University of Arkansas Law School in 1952 at the height of Jim Crow. Alex had described Ambassador Haley as “The Man Who Wouldn’t Quit” in an article for the March 1953 edition of Readers Digest about Late Ambassador Haley’s experiences at the U.A. School of Law”

Late Ambassador Haley was appointed U.S. ambassador to Gambian by President William J. Clinton from September 1998 to July 2001. For Ambassador Haley, this symbolized a homecoming of a kind, as the story of his great-great-great-grandfather, Kunta Kinte whose 1767 capture by slave traders from Gambian, was retold in late Alex Haley’s Pulitzer winning novel “Roots” and later reenacted in Roots movie. The movie, which has been translated in every major language, was made into a T.V. series and viewed by over 1.5 billion people. “Roots initiated such widespread interest in genealogy research that Haley is considered to be the father of popular genealogy.” (http://www.kintehaley.org/rootshaleybio.html).

A Morehouse College Atlanta alum, Late Ambassador Haley, graduated a year after Martin Luther King. While he was named to the school’s Law Review Staff, his journal was recognized in a national completion. In addition, during his time at U and A and thereafter, Haley worked to break down racial divide in America.