James Rives Childs (1893-1987)

Q-6-47

Diplomat and author J. Rives Childs lived here in his youth. During World War I, he served in the U.S. Army as a code breaker in France. After working for the American Relief Administration in the Balkans and the Soviet Union, he began a 30-year diplomatic career in 1923. During World War II, as chargé d'affaires at the American Legation in Tangier, Morocco, Childs helped 1,200 Hungarian Jews obtain entry visas for Spanish Morocco and escape the Holocaust. He received the Medal of Freedom in 1946. Childs was later U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia. He wrote the textbook American Foreign Service (1948) and was an authority on 18th-century scholar and adventurer Giacomo Casanova.

Department of Historic Resources, 2018

See a problem? Report it to HighwayMarkers@dhr.virginia.gov.

DHR could use your help! We don't have a recent image of this marker. If you have one that you'd like to submit for inclusion on this site, please send it to HighwayMarkers@dhr.virginia.gov.

References/Bibliographic Citation:

James Rives Childs, Let the Credit Go (New York: The K.S. Giniger Company, 1983). James Rives Childs, Reliques of the Rives (Lynchburg: J.P. Bell Company, 1929). Dictionary of Virginia Biography, 3:208-209. Lynchburg Daily Advance, 14 June 1962, 21 Jan. 1965, 14 Jan. 1976. Lynchburg News, 14 May 1946. Lynchburg City Directories. Gerald Loftus, “J. Rives Childs in Wartime Tangier” The Foreign Service Journal (Jan./Feb. 2014). Elmehdi Boudra, “Holocaust Remembrance and Education in Morocco,” (The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme), www.un.org. “Tangier American Diplomat Among the Righteous?” (http://legation.ipower.com/blog/?p=337) “James Rives Childs,” U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian (https://history.state.gov) New York Times, 16 July, 1987. Washington Post, 17 July 1987. VMI Alumni Association questionnaires (VMI Archives).