August 24, 1950: Edith Sampson, First Black American Named a US Delegate to the UN

Today in 1950 · Thursday, August 24, 1950

Edith Sampson with Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations in New York, September 21, 1950

Edith Sampson with Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations in New York, September 21, 1950 · National Archives, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On this day in 1950, President Truman appointed Chicago attorney Edith S. Sampson as an alternate United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly — the first Black American ever named a US delegate to the UN.

Sampson had come a long way to that appointment. Born in Pittsburgh on October 13, 1901, one of seven children in a working-class family, she had been encouraged into the law by Columbia professor George W. Kirchwey, and built a career in Chicago as an attorney at a time when both her race and her sex were treated as disqualifications.

The UN post was not the end of her firsts. In 1962 she became the first Black woman elected to the bench by popular vote in the United States, winning a judgeship on Chicago's Municipal Court. In August 1950, with the UN itself only five years old, her appointment put a Black American woman at the table where the postwar world was being argued into shape.

Also on this day

  • France's government moved toward committing ground troops to Korea; the formal decision to send an infantry battalion came the following day, August 25.
  • In Korea, the lull on the Pusan Perimeter continued as North Korean forces massed for their September offensive.
  • Died this day: Arturo Alessandri, twice president of Chile.

🎵 On the radio that week: America’s No. 1 song was “Goodnight Irene” by Gordon Jenkins and The Weavers (Billboard best sellers) — a folk song adapted by Lead Belly, who died broke in December 1949 — one year before it became the biggest hit of 1950. That sound never really left — we recreate 1950s doo-wop and slow-dance ballads every week: read the stories behind our songs or listen on the lovesong1950s channel.
🎬 At the movies: MGM's “Annie Get Your Gun” was three months into its run and still among the nation's twelve biggest grossers — Betty Hutton starring after an exhausted Judy Garland was let go mid-production.
⚾ In sports: The Yankees struck the first blow of the AL stretch drive, taking two of three from first-place Detroit at Yankee Stadium — a 13-6 rout and a 7-5 win trimming the Tigers' lead to 1.5 games.

Sources: Mississippi Today: On this day in 1950 · North Dallas Gazette: Judge Edith Sampson · Tri-State Defender: Aug 24, 1950 · Korea veterans ministry: France in the Korean War · Billboard best-seller charts, 1950 (issue scans) · Variety National Boxoffice Survey, 1950 (Lantern scans) · Retrosheet 1950 game logs and box scores. Every fact above is drawn from the records linked here — no dramatization, no invented details.

More from this series: Today in 1950 — the daily archive · every post from August 2026

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