September 28, 2004: Headlines: COS - Ghana: Country Directors - Ghana: The Argus: Ambassador Charles James become a director in the nascent Peace Corps in Ghana

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Ghana: Peace Corps Ghana : The Peace Corps in Ghana: September 28, 2004: Headlines: COS - Ghana: Country Directors - Ghana: The Argus: Ambassador Charles James become a director in the nascent Peace Corps in Ghana

By Admin1 (admin) (151.196.185.151) on Saturday, October 02, 2004 - 3:23 pm: Edit Post

Ambassador Charles James become a director in the nascent Peace Corps in Ghana

Ambassador Charles James become a director in the nascent Peace Corps in Ghana

Ambassador Charles James become a director in the nascent Peace Corps in Ghana

Ex-diplomat settles in Fremont

Pioneer at Yale Law School became U.S. envoy to Niger

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the latest in a series of stories about Tri-City area senior citizens.

By Julie Kay - CORRESPONDENT

FREMONT -- In his modest room at the Country Inn retirement home, 82-year-old Charles James is continuing a lifetime of service, putting the finishing touches on a DVD slide show featuring his fellow residents. Few of his neighbors know what he is up to.

Even fewer know that, nearly 30 years ago, James served as U.S. ambassador to Niger. He also was one of the first blacks to attend Yale Law School, and he was San Joaquin County's first nonwhite lawyer.

"I didn't realize I was being treated differently," James said of his early experiences with discrimination. And, in this same unassuming way, James seems happy to keep his past to himself. On his wall hang certificates and photographs of James with former statesmen, framed

modestly and easily missed.

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It has been a wild and unpredictable journey for James, born in 1922 and orphaned young. He spent his early years shuttled through foster homes before he finally was placed with an aunt in Philadelphia. He quickly became familiar with injustice, he said.

As a teenager, he recalls, he was taken by his aunt to visit her white doctor. The aunt boasted that James had plans to attend college.

"He said, 'Well, good luck, because colored kids just don't have what it takes,'" James recalled.

"That made me mad. Internally, I said 'I'll show you.'"

Fortunately, he said, his aunt turned him on to reading early in his life, even though she hardly read herself. She and James' uncle always expected him to attend college, he said, even though no one else in the community had.

"These people had never seen the outside of a college, let alone the inside," he said of his aunt and uncle. Still, he said, "they always said, 'When you go to college ...'"

In 1945, James was accepted to Middlebury College in Vermont. He was the only black student on campus.

It was never easy, he admitted. He worked long hours, often at multiple jobs at a time, to pay for school, he said. For several months he slept in the basement of a hotel where he worked, and ate only one meal a day. After a series of fainting spells, he went to his doctor at home only to discover he was literally starving, he said.

Despite the difficulties, James remained steadfastly upbeat.

"It doesn't pay to be bitter," he said. "You impede your own progress."

James went on to graduate from Yale Law School and open his own law practice. He later become a director in the nascent Peace Corps in Ghana and then Uganda, then worked for the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development in Kenya, Thailand and Vietnam.

He was appointed ambassador to Niger in 1976.

Still, he is modest when he speaks of his career.

"I'm service-oriented," he explains simply.





When this story was posted in October 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:


Director Gaddi Vasquez:  The PCOL Interview Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL Interview
PCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before.

Plus the debate continues over Safety and Security.
Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention
Governor Schwarzenegger praised the Peace Corps at the Republican National Convention: "We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach village children." Schwarzenegger has previously acknowledged his debt to his father-in-law, Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver, for teaching him "the joy of public service" and Arnold is encouraging volunteerism by creating California Service Corps and tapping his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead it. Leave your comments and who can come up with the best Current Events Funny?
 Peace Corps: One of the Best Faces of America Peace Corps: One of the Best Faces of America
Teresa Heinz Kerry celebrates the Peace Corps Volunteer as one of the best faces America has ever projected in a speech to the Democratic Convention. The National Review disagreed and said that Heinz's celebration of the PCV was "truly offensive." What's your opinion and can you come up with a Political Funny?


Read the stories and leave your comments.






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Story Source: The Argus

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ghana; Country Directors - Ghana

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