Was Joseph Bunel the first black man entertained by a sitting US president?

Answer 1

Joseph Bunel was the first Haitian ambassador to the U.S., but he seems to have been a white Frenchman sympathetic to the Haitian Revolution, rather than a black man. He first visited President John Adams in December 1798. The historian David McCullough presumed that Bunel was "a man of African descent" -- JOHN ADAMS (2001), p. 519 -- but contemporaneous accounts do not support this. Dr. Philippe R. Girard of McNeese State University (Louisiana) is at work on a book about Bunel and his diplomatic mission.