Celebrating the 90th Anniversary of the U.S. Foreign Service

Bring your lunch and join us as we celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the 1924 U.S. Foreign Service Act ("The Rogers Act"), which created the U.S. Foreign Service. We will explore the role of Massachusetts statesmen and diplomats in establishing the U.S. Foreign Service and in pioneering America's diplomatic history and tradition. The Rogers Act was authored by Massachusetts Congressman, John Jacob Rogers (1912-1925) of Lowell, Massachusetts, supported in the US Senate by Henry Cabot Lodge, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1893-1924), and signed into law by former Massachusetts Governor, President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929). Men from Massachusetts have also played important roles in America's diplomatic corps, from Boston-born American envoy Benjamin Franklin (America's first diplomat at the father of American diplomacy) to our current Secretary of State, former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

HdG, Dna. Maria St. Catherine McConnell is a U.S.-, U.N.-, Vatican-trained & Oxford-educated diplomatic scholar formerly with The American Academy of Diplomacy, and a member of the American Foreign Service Association. She heads the Franklin-Rogers MA Public Commission on American Diplomacy & The U.S. Foreign Service, whose mission includes the promotion of knowledge and appreciation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as "the birth-state of American diplomacy."