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Ralph Johnson Bunche (19 03–1971) was an American political scientist and diplomat known for his work with the United Nations (UN). He was the first African American to ear n a doctorate from Harvard University and to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, in 1963.

Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of California–Los Angeles in 1927 and then received his master’s degree and doctorate in government and international relations from Harvard University. From 1936 to 1938, Bunche conducted postdoctoral research (as a Social Science Research Council Fellow) at the London School of Economics and at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. As a result of his research, he became known as a leading expert on colonialism.

While still a graduate student, Bunche joined the faculty at Howard University and taught there until 1942. He was appointed to Harvard University in 1950, but he resigned in 1952 having never actually taught there. In 1953 he was elected the president of the American Political Science Association.

Bunche joined the National Defense Program Office (later the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency) as a senior analyst on Africa and Asia in 1941 and worked there until 1944. He then joined the U.S. Department of State and, in 1945, became the first African American to head a division of a federal agency when he became the acting chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs.

Bunche helped write the UN Charter and served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the first UN General Assembly in 1946. In 1947 he became the director of the UN’s trusteeship division. Three years later Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in negotiating the agreements that ended the 1948–1949 war between the newly established state of Israel and its Arab neighbors. Over the next two decades, Bunche presided over the UN conference on the peaceful uses of atomic energy and organized and directed UN peacekeeping operations in the Middle East, Lebanon, the Congo, Yemen, and Cyprus.

Bunche was an active scholar and participant in the civil rights movement. In 1931 he helped organize a protest against a segregated performance of Porgy and Bess at the National Theater in Washington, DC. His work as codirect or of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College resulted in his writing A World View of Race (1936). In 1935 he organized a conference at Howard University on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal domestic reform program and its impact on African Americans. In February 1936, Bunche cofounded the Negro National Congress, which held its first meeting in Chicago; Bunche would leave this organization in 1938 after it was taken over by the Communist Party. From 1938 to 1940, he worked with Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish sociologist, on his study of African Americans that culminated with Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). In 1949 Bunche was awarded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Spingarn Medal, the organization’s highest honor. President Harry S. Truman offered Bunche the position of assistant secretary of state, but he declined because of the segregated life in Washington, DC. Bunche participated in the 1963 March on Washington, at which he introduced famed activist Martin Luther King Jr., and he helped to lead the 1965 civil rights march organized by King.

Bunche served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation (1955–1971), as a member of the New York City Board of Education (1958–1964), and as a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University (1960–1965). Suffering from heart disease and diabetes, Bunche resigned as UN undersecretary-general on October 1, 1971. He died on December 9, 1971.

Bibliography:

Bunche, Ralph J. “French Administration in Togoland and Dahomey.” PhD diss., Harvard University Graduate School, 1934.
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.
Henry, Charles P., ed. Ralph J. Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Ralph Bunche: Model Negro or American Other? New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Kugelmass, J. Alvin. Ralph J. Bunche: Fighter for Peace. New York: Julian Messner, 1952.
Rivlin, Benjamin, ed. Ralph Bunche: The Man and His Times. New York: Holmes and Meir, 1990.

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