Shirley Temple Black
![Ambassador Shirley Temple Black in Czechoslovakia in, Wikimedia](https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/sites/default/files/styles/275x168/public/uploads/Screen%20Shot%202014-03-10%20at%2010.13.09%20AM.png?itok=Krpsl9h8)
I’m a Shirley Temple fan. Not a big fan of her movies; they seemed more suited for my sister. I’m a fan of her diplomacy in Czechoslovakia. I was a Newsweek reporter living in Prague between the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” and 1991 when I saw up close how Ambassador Shirley Temple Black worked it. That’s how I became a fan. (Disclosure: I like ambassadors, my wife was U.S. ambassador to Hungary 2010-13.)
America has had many notable diplomats dealing with Czechoslovakia, or the more modern Czech Republic, a country split from Slovakia in 1993 following a “Velvet Divorce.”
![](https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/sites/default/files/styles/275x168/public/uploads/ST.jpg_0.jpg?itok=tK0JKuqU)
Her personal and informal style worked well with the new government, made up of formerly imprisoned, hard laboring and human rights Charter 77-signing artists, musicians, actors and a playwright president named Vaclav Havel.