Ralph J. Bunche 1904–1971

Political scientist, diplomat, United Nations official

At a Glance…

Studied Colonialism, U.S. Race Relations

Became Leading United Nations Official

Won Nobel Peace Prize

Criticized by Militant Blacks and Right Wing Conservatives

Selected writings

Sources

With quiet dignity and a deep-rooted commitment to world peace, the late Nobel laureate Ralph Bunche ascended the ladder of government service to become the highest ranking black and American in the United Nations (UN), an international organization of more than 150 member nations that serves to monitor political activity and mediate disputes throughout the world. Bunche is credited with having used his disarming diplomatic skills to broker peace among warring factions that many observers believed would never even negotiate with each other.

Although he began his career as a scholar, garnering a string of notable academic firsts, Bunche’s principal contribution to history lies in his pacifying heated political tempers in the Middle East, the Congo, Greece, and other hot spots around the world. In his later years, Bunche was criticized by some elements of the conservative right wing in the United States, and, more scathingly, by members of the militant wing of the black civil rights movement, who charged that he was an “Uncle Tom” more interested in serving his white superiors and resolving international conflicts than in addressing the plight of blacks in his own segregated backyard. He graciously answered this criticism by pointing to his history of commitment to civil rights and, on a broader level, by arguing that efforts made toward world peace would help the United States maintain peace at home as well.

Ralph Johnson Bunche’s life was, in the eyes of many, the stuff of legend. He was born August 7, 1904, in Detroit, Michigan, the only son of Fred Bunche, an itinerant barber, and the former Olive Agnes Johnson, an amateur pianist. He was not, as has often been said, the grandson of a slave, but Bunche did grow up in a ghetto racked by poverty, a condition that he would rise above by virtue of his sharp mind.

In 1914, in the hope that dryer air and a warmer climate would improve Olive’s tuberculosis, the Bunches moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The ride to the southwestern United States provided young Ralph’s first exposure to a Jim Crow train in which blacks were relegated to the cars carrying luggage.

Disease claimed his parents’ lives when he was 12, and Bunche, along with his sister, moved to Los Angeles, California, where they were taken in and reared by their maternal grandmother, Lucy Johnson. She taught the importance of self-respect, integrity, and hard work, and Bunche excelled in his studies, emerging as the class valedictorian at Jefferson

At a Glance…

Born Ralph Johnson Bunche, August 7, 1904, in Detroit, Ml; died December 9,1971, in New York City; son of Fred (a barber) and Olive Agnes (a pianist; maiden name, Johnson) Bunche; married Ruth Ethel Harris, June 23, 1930; children: Joan Harris, Jane (deceased), Ralph Johnson. Education: University of California at Los Angeles, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1927; Harvard University, M.A., 1928, Ph.D., 1934; postdoctoral work, Northwestern University, London School of Economics, and University of Capetown, 1936–38.

Howard University, Washington, DC, instructor, 1928–29, assistant professor, 1929–33, associate professor of political science, 1933–38; founder of National Negro Congress, 1936; codirector of Institute of Race Relations, Swarthmore College, 1936; assistant to sociologist Gunnar Myrdal for preparation of race treatise An American Dilemma, 1938–40; Office of the Coordinator of Information (later Office of Strategic Services), Washington, DC, senior social science analyst in charge of research on Africa and the Far East, 1941–44, chief of Africa section, 1943–44; U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, area specialist on Africa for Division of Political Studies, 1944–47; assistant secretary, U.S. delegation to Dumbarton Oaks conference, United Nations (UN) Conference on International Organization, 1945; adviser, U.S. delegation to UN General Assembly, 1946; director of UN Trusteeship Department, 1948–54; UN undersecretary, 1955, undersecretary for special political affairs, 1958–67, and undersecretary-general, 1967–71; UN mediator on Palestine, 1948–49, Egypt, 1956, the Congo, 1960, and Yemen, 1963.

Selected awards: Spingarn Medal, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1949; Nobel Peace Prize, 1950; Theodore Roosevelt Association Medal of Honor, 1954; Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom, both 1963; inducted into African American Hall of Fame, 1991.

High School. He worked for a time as a carpet layer, and his boss offered to send him to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study the chemistry of dyes. But his grandmother, wary of his being beholden to anybody, advised against the offer, and Bunche, with the help of an athletic scholarship, enrolled instead at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Studied Colonialism, U.S. Race Relations

Studying for a degree in international relations, Bunche refined the worldview that his grandmother first had instilled in him, a perspective that was manifested in the optimism and goodwill with which he carried out his life. The New Yorker quoted a 1925 academic paper in which Bunche rejected the theory of philosopher Thomas Hobbes that human beings are naturally brutish, self-serving, egotistic animals. “It is true that man has these qualities in him, but I contend that these base characteristics are in part counteracted by good ones. I have a deep-set conviction that man must have an inherent notion of right and wrong, a fundamental moral structure and a simple sense of individual obligation, whether he be in a natural state or in society.”

In 1927 Bunche graduated at the head of his class and in his commencement address urged his fellow graduates to dedicate their lives to human fellowship and peace. He earned a scholarship to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University in Massachusetts, and, lacking train fare and money for expenses, was given $1000 by a black women’s social club convinced of his talent and potential. He received his master’s degree in 1928 and traveled to western Africa to complete his dissertation on French colonial rule in Togoland (now Togo and Ghana) and Dahomey (now Benin). In 1934 Bunche became the first black American to receive a doctorate in political science.

Bunche helped establish the political science department at the all-black Howard University, became codirector of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College, and from 1936 to 1938, engaged in postdoctoral work in anthropology at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Capetown in South Africa. From 1938 to 1940, armed with an expertise in colonialism and field research, Bunche collaborated with the eminent Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal on An American Dilemma, a monumental study of race relations and prejudice in the United States. In one incident, while trying to gather comprehensive information on black-white relations in the deep South, Bunche and Myrdal were chased through Alabama by a mob of whites angered by questions about interracial sex.

Became Leading United Nations Official

During World War II, in which he could not serve because of a sports injury, Bunche launched his career of public service by joining the National Defense Program’s Office of the Coordinator of Information (which later became the Office of Strategic Services). As senior analyst of Africa and the Far East, he studied colonial areas of possible strategic importance to the United States. He went on to become chief of the office’s Africa section and subsequently worked at the U.S. State Department, where he participated in the initial conferences that laid the groundwork for the United Nations and wrote a section of the UN charter dealing with the administration of former colonies of countries defeated in the war. In 1946 Bunche was the only African American to serve on the U.S. delegation to the first General Assembly of the United Nations, and a little more than a year later he was hired by then-UN secretary-general Trygve Lie to serve as director of the Trusteeship Department. He rose to the position of undersecretary-general—the highest U.S. official at the United Nations—and would become the valued right-hand man of Lie, as well as of future UN heads Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant.

It was at the United Nations that Bunche found the perfect fit of his commitment to world peace, his belief that the good qualities of people can triumph over the bad, and his optimism that conflict, no matter how entrenched and bitter, can be resolved. “I have a number of very strong biases,” a 1972 Ebony article quoted Bunche as having once said. “I have a deepseated bias against hate and intolerance. I have a bias against racial and religious bigotry. I have a bias against war, a bias for peace. I have a bias which leads me to believe in the essential goodness of my fellow man, which leads me to believe that no problem in human relations is ever insoluble. And I have a strong bias in favor of the United Nations and its ability to maintain a peaceful world.”

Won Nobel Peace Prize

Bunche’s first major diplomatic challenge validated the hopes he had pinned on the United Nations. In 1948 Lie asked him to accompany United Nations-appointed mediator Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden to the Middle East in an effort to peacefully resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict over the birth of a Jewish state and the partitioning of Palestine. The UN mission in the Holy Land was perilous, as the conflict touched not only on political states and geographic borders, but on fundamental and divisive religious animosities. The cars in which the UN negotiators rode were often fired on by snipers, and one of the chauffeurs driving Bunche was killed.

When Bernadotte was assassinated by Israeli terrorists in late 1948, the UN Security Council entrusted Bunche with the task of brokering a peace. Recognizing that the factions refused to sit face to face at the negotiating table, Bunche worked night and day organizing and leading small committees that discussed particular points, lest they be distracted by the enormity of the problem as a whole. Marshaling a strong personality and an objectivity that demonstrated his fairness, Bunche earned the trust of both the Israelis and the Arabs and succeeded in negotiating a truce, then an armistice, and, in 1949, the end of the conflict.

Bunche was awarded the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize, the first black to be so honored, and brought new respect to the organization that he had long championed. A UN colleague was quoted as telling the New Yorker, “I’ve known him and worked with him since 1946, and his devotion to the UN—I must say, greatly to his own cost—has been single-minded. He’s usually the first into a dangerous situation and the last out. He regards life with the calm and compassion of a selfless man devoted to a great task.”

While most famous for the 1949 agreement, Bunche is said to have considered his proudest accomplishment his 1956 role in directing the 6000-man UN Emergency Forces that helped sustain peace for 11 years in Egypt when the Suez crisis seemed on the brink of a catastrophic war. “For the first time we have found a way to use military men for peace instead of war,” Bunche was quoted in Time as having said.

Bunche’s most difficult assignment, by his own admission, was keeping the peace in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1960, when Belgium granted independence to the African country and pulled out, leaving a vacuum of political leadership and skilled personnel. Bunche was called in to lead a 20,000-man UN force to prevent the collision of a leaderless military and a province threatening to secede. After two months of negotiations, Bunche successfully shaped a political environment in which the fledgling country of Zaire was afforded a promising, peaceful opportunity to survive.

Because of his commitment to peace and his successes in the art of diplomacy, Bunche was offered the position of assistant secretary of state in the administration of Harry Truman, then the highest U.S. post ever offered an African American. However, Bunche declined the offer, saying, according to Time, “It is well known that there is Jim Crow in Washington. It is equally well known that no Negro finds Jim Crow congenial. I am a Negro.”

Criticized by Militant Blacks and Right Wing Conservatives

Ironically, Bunche was accused by some factions of trying to escape his race. As many whites proclaimed Bunche the quintessential successful black man, some militant civil rights activists charged that, in trotting around the globe to foster world peace, he had turned his back on the bitter struggle blacks were waging for equality in a segregated United States. But Bunche, who understood the personal and cultural impact of bigotry, answered that he had not only studied prejudice against blacks; more importantly, he had lived it. He walked his first picket for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1937, demonstrated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963, and took part in the civil rights marches on Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, two years later.

Furthermore, Bunche argued during the Vietnam War that if the United States were serious about combating and eliminating racism, the government would take the funds and energy it was investing in Southeast Asia and channel them into a domestic war against the black ghettos. As a citizen of the world, he also saw for the troubled United States an educational example in the way former European colonies in Africa were beginning to stand on their own two feet. “They sit in the international councils on an equal basis with their former mother countries and rulers,” he noted in Newsweek. “I have come to believe that what is good for the world is good for my country.”

A more predictable source of criticism was the far right. For instance, the National Review, a conservative mouthpiece, editorialized in 1962 that Bunche was an unapologetic Marxist [advocate of the social and economic doctrine of nineteenth-century German intellectual Karl Marx, centering on the establishment of a classless society and common ownership of production] and had told “bald lies” concerning the United Nations’ involvement in the Congo. “It had been our intention to leave Dr. Bunche alone, having dismissed him as, essentially, a UN mercenary, a man with an undistinguished mind and rather bad personal manners,” the magazine said. “It becomes necessary under the circumstances… to go on just a little bit further, and say that Mr. Bunche’s judgment is very poor indeed, and that this should be kept in mind in evaluating his assessments of the tangled affairs of our disintegrating world.”

Bunche, whom President Lyndon Johnson had beseeched not to resign from the UN in 1966, remained undersecretary-general until just before his death in 1971. He always maintained that his diplomatic successes were a testimony to the vision behind the United Nations and argued that persisting, seemingly insoluble crises, such as that in the Middle East, would be more productively addressed by negotiation rather than by war.

Echoing the thoughts of many world leaders, former British UN ambassador Lord Caradon was quoted as saying in Newsweek, “Of all the people I have worked with in my life, there is no one I respect more. He has always been my great hero. He represents everything I admire in international affairs and public life. Of all his great qualities—and he had so many—the one that I would choose is that of determined optimism. Never did he give up. Never did he despair. He is certainly one the great Americans.”

Selected writings

A World View of Race, Association of Negro Folk Education, 1936.

Peace and the United Nations, Leeds University, 1952.

The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR (interviews), University of Chicago Press, 1973.

An African American in South Africa: The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche, 28 September 1937–1 January 1938, edited by Robert R. Edgar, Swallow, 1992.

Sources

Books

Cornell, Jean G., Ralph Bunche: Champion of Peace, Garrard, 1976.

Jakoubek, Robert, Ralph Bunche, Chelsea House, 1989.

Kugelmass, J. Alvin, Ralph J. Bunche: Fighter for Peace, Messner, 1962.

Mann, Peggy, Ralph Bunche: UN Peacemaker, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975.

Periodicals

Christian Century, December 29, 1971.

Ebony, February 1972; September 1992.

Holiday, April 1970.

Nation, December 17, 1971.

National Review, May 22, 1962.

Newsweek, October 11, 1971; December 20, 1971.

New Yorker, January 1, 1972.

New York Times, December 10, 1971.

Time, December 20, 1971.

—Isaac Rosen

BUNCHE, RALPH 1904-1971

Diplomat, undersecretary-general of the united nations

Prominent Figure

In 1950 Ralph Bunche became the first black person awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in fostering an armistice between warring Arabs and Israelis. The award brought to public attention a long record of public service. Bunche was a central figure among blacks, and although less well known during the 1940s than W. E. B. Du Bois or A. Philip Randolph, like them he prepared the way for the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. An early leader in forming American policy in Africa, Bunche played a major intellectual role in the decolonization movement after World War II.

Respected Scholar

The grandson of slaves, Bunche was born on 7 August 1904 in Detroit. Showing intellectual promise early, he excelled academically and graduated with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles. He attended graduate school at Harvard University and became a faculty member at Howard University in Washington, D.C., the "Black Athens" of America. He then returned to Harvard to complete his Ph.D. in government and international relations in 1934. Widely considered one of the foremost students of race relations, he became the chief assistant to the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myri, contributing to his groundbreaking study An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Joining the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II as an analyst, Bunche quickly became the intelligence agency's expert on Africa and the Far East and wrote the handbook given to every GI entering the North African combat theater.

Skillful Diplomat

In 1944 Bunche joined the State Department's Division of Dependent Area Affairs, then in 1947 was appointed to the United Nations to deal with territories under UN trusteeship. In that capacity he was assigned to Palestine at the moment when many surviving European Jews were flocking to their ancestral homeland to seek a nation of their own. Britain had indicated its willingness to grant independence to Palestine, but monarchs in neighboring states insisted that it become an Arab nation. The partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states precipitated the first Arab-Israeli War. When the UN mediator in the conflict, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, was assassinated by Jewish terrorists, Bunche replaced him and used his extraordinary diplomatic skills to craft a cease-fire acceptable to both sides. His diplomacy led him to be considered by President Harry S Truman for the post of undersecretary of state, but the nomination was abandoned as too provocative a challenge to the prevailing color line. The Swedish government noticed Bundle's talents, however, and awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1955 he was appointed Undersecretary of the United Nations, the highest position held by an American in the organization at the time, and he continued to mediate conflicts throughout the world. He became undersecretary-general in 1967.

Under Attack

As a black intellectual deeply concerned about segregation in America, Bunche was drawn to radical critiques of Western imperialism and colonialism, especially to class-based economic analyses of exploitation. Like many intellectuals during the 1930s, he was involved in Marxist study groups and radical organizations. He inevitably became the focus of McCarthyite witch hunts in the 1950s, resulting in FBI and Senate investigations into his past. His relationship with Alger Hiss, when the two were State Department colleagues, was criticized, and his writings and his memberships in the National Negro League and teachers' unions were scrutinized. The fact that he had associated with Communists was presented as evidence that he was a secret Communist. Responding to these attacks, he defended his intellectual freedom to read and write as he pleased under the First Amendment and to associate with anyone of his choosing, but he denied ever having been a member of the Communist Party, and his work in the OSS, the State Department, and the UN indicated a deep antipathy to Soviet policies. The attack on Bunche was part of an orchestrated campaign to characterize the civil rights struggle as a Communist plot. Later, despite endorsements by W. Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller, and other pillars of the establishment, Bunche was not offered the post of ambassador to the Soviet Union by President John F. Kennedy because of the lingering effect of these attacks.

Civil Rights Advocate

Ironically, because he became part of the American political establishment, Bunche was also attacked by Du Bois and others on the left wing of the African American community. Yet in his writings on race Bunche condemned the American system of segregation, advocating nothing less than full equality for blacks. He especially stressed the importance of economic justice and became a trusted adviser of Martin Luther King, Jr., advocating peaceful means for fundamental change. He condemned the war in Vietnam as a misappropriation of valuable resources for destructive purposes and urged, with King, a redirection of military spending to domestic purposes to curb poverty. Though he is little remembered today, Bunche was renowned as one of the most intelligent and humane diplomats the United States has ever produced.

Source:

Brian Urquhart, Ralph Bunche: An American Life (New York: Norton, 1993).

Ralph Johnson Bunche

Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971) was the highest American official in the United Nations. For his conduct of negotiations leading to an armistice in the First Arab-Israeli War, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, the first African American to do so.

Abarber's son, Ralph Bunche was born in Detroit, Mich., on Aug. 7, 1904. His parents died when he was 13, and his maternal grandmother took Ralph and his young sister to live in Los Angeles. While going to school Ralph helped support the family by working as a janitor, carpet-layer, and seaman. His grandmother's indomitable will and her wisdom had a lasting influence on him.

Bunche attended the University of California at Los Angeles on scholarships and graduated in 1927. He earned a master's degree at Harvard University in 1928 and a doctorate in government and international relations at Harvard in 1934. His doctoral dissertation won the Tappan Prize as the best one in the social sciences that year. Later he did advanced work in anthropology at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Cape Town.

From 1928 to 1942 Bunche was a member (and chairman from 1937) of the department of political science at Howard University. He married Ruth Harris, one of his students, in 1930; the couple had three children. In 1950 he was appointed to the faculty of Harvard University, but after two successive leaves of absence he resigned in 1952 without having taught there.

An expert on colonialism, Bunche worked during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services as an analyst of African and Far Eastern affairs, moving in 1944 to the State Department, where he became head of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs. At Dumbarton Oaks in 1944, San Francisco in 1945, and London in 1946, he was active as an authority on trusteeship in the planning and establishment of the United Nations (UN). In 1947, at the invitation of Secretary General Trygve Lie, Bunche joined the UN Secretariat as director of the Trusteeship Division.

Lie and his successors, Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant, gave special troubleshooting assignments to Bunche. In 1947 he was a member of the UN Special Committee on Palestine that recommended partition of the country into Jewish and Arab states. Arab refusal to accept the UN plan resulted in the First Arab-Israeli War. When the UN's chief mediator in that conflict, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated in 1948, Bunche took his place. From January to June 1949 he presided over the difficult negotiations between Arab and Israeli delegations on the island of Rhodes that led eventually to an armistice. Both sides praised his achievement, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

In 1955 Bunche was named undersecretary without portfolio in the UN Secretariat and in 1957 undersecretary for special political affairs (in 1969 this title was changed to undersecretary general). He directed UN peace-keeping operations in the Suez area (1956), in the Congo (1960), and on the island of Cyprus (1964) and was also responsible for the UN's program in the peaceful uses of atomic energy. He became U Thant's most influential political adviser. In June 1971, fatally ill, Bunche retired from his post. He died in New York City on December 9.

The grandson of a slave, Bunche bore with great reserve the indignities of racial prejudice that he experienced. His lifelong concern about race relations was the source of his early desire to be a teacher and his later specialization in colonial problems. In 1936 he was codirector of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College. From 1938 to 1940, as a staff member of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, he served as chief aide to Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal in his investigation of the race problem in the United States that led to Myrdal's influential book An American Dilemma. Bunche wrote or supervised 13 of the 81 volumes of manuscripts and memoranda submitted to Myrdal for the book. For 22 years Bunche was a member of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1965 he participated in marches in Selma and Montgomery, Ala., led by Martin Luther King, Jr., to protest racial discrimination.

Bunche received many honorary degrees and awards, and President John F. Kennedy presented him with the Medal of Freedom in 1963. Bunche was president of the American Political Science Association and a member of the Harvard University board of overseers.

Further Reading

Bunche wrote A World View of Race (1936; repr. 1968). Howard P. Linton compiled Ralph Johnson Bunche: Writings by and about Him from 1928 to 1966 (1967). A biography is J. Alvin Kugelmass, Ralph J. Bunche: Fighter for Peace (1962). There is a short biography of him in Wilhelmina S. Robinson, Historical Negro Biographies (1968). For examinations of the UN Secretariat and the UN's peace-keeping efforts see Sydney D. Bailey, The Secretariat of the United Nations (1962; rev. ed. 1964), and James M. Boyd, United Nations Peace-keeping Operations: A Military and Political Appraisal (1971). □

Ralph Bunche

Born: August 7, 1904
Detroit, Michigan
Died: December 9, 1971
New York, New York
African American diplomat and professor

Ralph Bunche was the highest American official in the United Nations. In 1950 he became the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the negotiations that led to a truce in the First Arab-Israeli War (1948–49).

Childhood and early career

Ralph Johnson Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan, on August 7, 1904. (His given last name was Bunch, but as a teenager he added the "e" because he thought it looked better.) Bunche's father was a barber, and his parents were very poor. In time they also became very ill and both died when he was thirteen years old. After his parents' deaths Bunche and his young sister went to live with his maternal grandmother in Los Angeles. While going to school he helped support the family by working as a janitor, a carpet-layer, and a seaman. His grandmother's strong will and her wisdom had a lasting influence on him.

Bunche attended the University of California at Los Angeles on scholarships and graduated in 1927. He earned a master's degree at Harvard University in 1928 and a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in government and international relations at Harvard in 1934.

In 1928 Bunche began teaching in the Department of Political Science at Howard University. He was department chairman from 1937 to 1942. In 1930 he married Ruth Harris, one of his students. The couple had three children. In 1950 he was appointed to the faculty of Harvard University, but after two leaves of absence he resigned in 1952, without having taught there.

United Nations

Bunche was an expert on colonialism. The term colonialism refers to a nation's possession or control over a colony. (For example, both the United States and Nigeria were once colonies ruled by Great Britain.) During World War II (1939–45), Bunche worked in the U.S. Office of Strategic Services as an expert on African and Far Eastern affairs. In 1944 he moved to the U.S. State Department. From 1944 to 1946 Bunche was active as an expert on trusteeship in the planning and establishment of the United Nations (UN). (Trusteeship is the overseeing of a colony or territory by a country or countries given the authority to do so by the UN.) In 1947 Bunche was asked to join the UN Secretariat by the UN's Secretary General, Trygve Lie (1896–1968). Bunche served as director of the Trusteeship Division.

At the UN Bunche was given some difficult assignments. In 1947 he was a member of the UN Special Committee on Palestine that recommended Palestine's division into Jewish and Arab states. The Arabs refused to accept the UN plan. This led to the first Arab-Israeli War. When the UN's chief negotiator in that conflict was assassinated in 1948, Bunche took his place. From January to June 1949 he led the difficult negotiations between Arab and Israeli groups on the Greek island of Rhodes. The negotiations eventually led to an agreement to end the fighting. Both sides praised his achievement, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

From 1955 to 1971 Bunche held important positions at the UN. He directed UN peacekeeping operations in the Suez area of the Middle East (1956), in the Congo (1960), and on the island of Cyprus (1964). He was also responsible for the UN's program involving the peaceful uses of atomic energy. In June 1971 he retired while suffering from a fatal illness.

Concern with race relations

Bunche was the grandson of a slave. His personal experience of prejudice (making judgments about a person solely based on his or her race) and his concern about race relations led him to become a teacher and an expert in the problems of colonialism. In 1936 he was codirector of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College. From 1938 to 1940 he assisted the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) in his investigation of racial problems in the United States. Their research led to Myrdal's book An American Dilemma.

For twenty-two years Bunche was a member of the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1965 he participated in marches in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. Led by Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), the marches protested racial discrimination.

Bunche received many honorary degrees and awards. President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) presented him with the Medal of Freedom in 1963. Bunche died in New York City on December 9, 1971.

For More Information

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

Schraff, Anne E. Ralph Bunche: Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1999.

Urquhart, Brian. Ralph Bunche: An American Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

Bunche, Ralph (b. 7 Aug. 1904, d. 9 Dec. 1971). UN diplomat Born in Detroit and educated at Harvard, he taught political science at Harvard and Howard Universities. In 1944, he published a major book on race relations, An American Dilemma. During World War II he served with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department, joined the UN Secretariat in 1946, and served on the Palestine Peace Commission in 1947. Following the assassination of Count Bernadotte in 1948 he carried on negotiations with such skill that he was able to arrange an armistice between the warring Arabs and Jews. For this he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, the first awarded to an African American. He served as director of the Trusteeship Division of the UN 1948–54 and then, until his death, as Under-Secretary for Political Affairs. As such he was responsible for UN peacekeeping ventures in Suez (1956), the Congo (1960), and Cyprus (1964).

Ralph Johnson Bunche , 1904–71, U.S. government official and UN diplomat, b. Detroit, Ph.D., Harvard, 1934. He taught political science at Howard Univ. (1928–40). In government service after 1941, he worked under the joint chiefs of staff and was a chief research analyst in the Office of Strategic Services. The first African American to be a division head in the Dept. of State (1945), he entered the United Nations in 1946 as director of the Trusteeship Division. He became (Dec., 1947) principal secretary of the UN Palestine Commission and was awarded the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the 1948 Arab-Israeli truce. He served as UN undersecretary general for special political affairs (1955–67) and undersecretary general from 1967 until his retirement due to poor health shortly before his death.

Bibliography: See study by P. Mann (1975); biography by B. Jakouvek (1989).

Bunche, Ralph (1904–71) US administrator and diplomat. During World War II, he served with the joint chiefs-of-staff and the State Department. In 1946 he joined the secretariat of the United Nations and served on the UN Palestine Commission in 1947. After Count BERNADOTTE was assassinated in 1948, he carried on negotiations between the warring Arabs and Jews with such skill that he was able to arrange an armistice between them. For this achievement he was awarded (1950) the Nobel Peace Prize, the first awarded to a Black American.

Bunche, Ralph Johnson (1904–71) US diplomat. Bunche joined the staff of the United Nations in 1947, and helped negotiate a cease-fire in the Arab-Israeli conflict (1949), for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize (1950). He directed UN peacekeeping forces in Suez (1956), the Congo (1960) and Cyprus (1964) and was UN under secretary general (1967–71).