Ralph Bunche

Dr. Ralph Bunche, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1951

Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche (August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist, diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine. He was the first person of color to be so honored in the history of the Prize.[1]. Bunche did not form or serve as an officer of any civil rights organizations but through his writing and teaching he helped to provide a solid intellectual foundation for anti-racist and civil rights activism. He also played an importnat role in the formation of the United Nations at both Dumbarton Oaks (1944) and San Fransisco (1945) representing the United States. In 1946, he was appointed director of the UN Trusteeship Department. He worked closely with the UN's mediator in the Arab-Isreali conflict, Folke Bernadotte whom he succeeded in September 1948 following Bernadotte's assassination. He contunied to serve the UN as undersecretary for special political affairs. In 1960, he was UN special envoy in the war-torn Congo. In 1963, he received the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson. "His message," says his Nobel biography, "has been clear: Racial prejudice is an unreasoned phenomenon without scientific basis in biology or anthropology; 'segregation and democracy are incompatible'; blacks should maintain the struggle for equal rights while accepting the responsibilities that come with freedom; whites must demonstrate that 'democracy is color-blind'" . Bunche strongly supported the UN's peace-keeping role, pointing out that despite failures the UN had the courage to do what the old League of Nations had failed to do, "step in and tackle the buzz saw"

Early life

Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan to an African-American family; his father was a barber, his mother an amateur musician. They moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, when he was a child to improve his parents' health. His parents died soon after, and he was raised by his grandmother in Los Angeles, who looked "white" but was an active member of the black community.

Bunche was a brilliant student, a top debater, and the valedictorian of his graduating class at Jefferson High School. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles and graduated summa cum laude in 1927 — again as the valedictorian of his class. Using the money his community raised for his studies, and a scholarship from the University, he studied at Harvard. There he earned a master's degree in political science in 1928 and a doctorate in 1934, though he was already by that time teaching in Howard University's Department of Political Science, which he chaired from 1928 until 1950. He lived in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and was a member of the American Federation of Teachers affiliate at Harvard.

In 1936 Bunche authored a pamphlet entitled A World View of Race. In it Bunche wrote: "And so class will some day supplant race in world affairs. Race war will then be merely a side-show to the gigantic class war which will be waged in the big tent we call the world."

World War II years

Bunche spent time during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the CIA) before joining the State Department. In 1943 Bunche went to the State Department where he became associate chief of the division of dependent area affairs under Alger Hiss. He became, with Hiss, one of the leaders of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR).

He participated in the preliminary planning for the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference of 1945.

Work with the United Nations

At the close of the second World War, Bunche was active in preliminary planning for the United Nations (Dumbarton Oaks Conversations held in Washington D.C. in 1944). He was also an advisor to the U.S. delegation for the "Charter Conference" of the United Nations held in 1945. Additionally, he was closely involved in drafting the charter of the United Nations. Ralph Bunche along with Eleanor Roosevelt were considered instrumental in the creation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

According to the United Nations document "Ralph Bunche: Visionary for Peace," during his 25 years of service to the United Nations he:

...championed the principle of equal rights for everyone, regardless of race or creed. He believed in “the essential goodness of all people, and that no problem in human relations is insoluble.” Through the UN Trusteeship Council, Bunche readied the international stage for an unprecedented period of transformation, dismantling the old colonial systems in Africa and Asia, and guiding scores of emerging nations through the transition to independence in the post-war era.

Palestine and Nobel Peace Prize

Beginning in 1947, Bunche was involved with the Arab-Israeli conflict. He served as assistant to the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine, and thereafter as the principal secretary of the U.N. Palestine Commission. In 1948 he traveled to the Middle East as the chief aide to Count Folke Bernadotte, who had been appointed by the U.N. to mediate the conflict. In September, Bernadotte was assassinated by members of the underground Jewish group Lehi. Bunche became the U.N.'s chief mediator and concluded the task with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements which brought an end to the first Arab-Isreali war, although not a permanent peace. It was for this work that he received the 1950 Peace Prize and many other honors.

He continued to work for the United Nations, mediating in other strife-torn regions including The Congo, Yemen, Kashmir, and Cyprus, eventually rising to the position of undersecretary-general in 1968.

Prominent African-American

As a prominent African-American, Bunche was an active and vocal supporter of the civil rights movement, though he never actually held a titled position in the major organizations of the movement.[2]

Bunche died in 1971 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.

File:BustOfRalphBunche,UCLA,BuncheHall.jpg

A bust of Ralph Bunche, Bunche Hall UCLA

A bust of Ralph Bunche, on the entrance to Bunche Hall, overlooks the Sculpture Garden at UCLA.

The Ralph J. Bunche Library of the U.S. Department of State is the oldest Federal Government library. It was founded by the first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson in 1789. It was dedicated to and renamed the Ralph J. Bunche Library on May 5, 1997. It is located in the Harry S. Truman building, the main State Department headquarters.

Ralph Bunche Park is in New York City, across First Avenue from the United Nations headquarters. Ralph Bunche's house is in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC, where he resided for many years.

Quotes

• "May there be, in our time, at long last, a world at peace in which we, the people, may for once begin to make full use of the great good that is in us."[3]

Selected bibliography

• Bunche, Ralph, A World View of Race. (Bronze Booklet Series. Washington, D.C.: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936) [Reprint, Port Washington, NY, Kennikat Press, 1968; excerpt in Ralph Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings, edited by Charles P. Henry]

• Bunche, Ralph. The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR, edited with an Introduction by Dewey W. Grantham. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973) [A version of a Ralph Bunche 1941 research memorandum prepared for the Carnegie-Myrdal Study, "The Negro in America"]

• Bunche, Ralph. A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership, edited with an Introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway (NY, New York University Press, 2005) [A version of "The Negro in America"]

• Edgar, Robert R., ed. An African American in South Africa: The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche, 28 September 1937 - 1 January 1938. (Athens, Ohio University Press, 1992)

• Henry, Charles P., ed. Ralph J. Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995)

See also

• List of African American firsts

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Henry, Charles P. Ralph Bunche: Model Negro or American Other? (NY, New York University Press, 1999)

• Rivlin, Benjamin, ed. Ralph Bunche: The Man and His Times (New York: Holmes & Meyer, 1990)

• Urquhart, Brian. Ralph Bunche: An American Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993) [Paperback edition titled Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, 1998]

• Nobel Committee information on Bunche

• Ralph Bunche Biography

External links

• Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey
• Ralph Bunche Centenary Home Page
• UCLA Library Ralph Bunche Exhibit
• Ralph J. Bunche Library at the U.S. Department of State

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