Ralph Johnson Bunche ( ; August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in the Arab–Israeli conflict. He was the first Black Nobel laureate. He was also involved in the formation and early administration of the United Nations, serving as the under‑secretary‑general and briefly the acting secretary-general in 1953, and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous United Nations peacekeeping operations.
Bunche served on the US delegation to both the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 and United Nations Conference on International Organization in 1945 that drafted the UN charter. He then served on the American delegation to the first session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1946 and joined the UN as head of the Trusteeship Department, beginning a long series of troubleshooting roles and responsibilities related to decolonization. In 1948, Bunche became an acting mediator for the Middle East, negotiating an armistice between Egypt and Israel. For this success he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
Bunche continued to serve at the UN, working on crises in the Sinai (1956), the Congo (1960), Yemen (1963), Cyprus (1964) and Bahrain (1970), reporting directly to the UN Secretary-General. He chaired study groups dealing with water resources in the Middle East. In 1957, he was promoted to under-secretary-general for special political affairs, having prime responsibility for peacekeeping roles. In 1965, Bunche supervised the ceasefire following the war between India and Pakistan. He retired from the UN in June 1971, dying six months later.Jentleson, Bruce W., and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Encyclopedia of US Foreign Relations. (1997) 1:191.
In 1963, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy. At the UN, Bunche gained such fame that Ebony magazine proclaimed him perhaps the most influential African American of the first half of the 20th century and "[f]or nearly a decade, he was the most celebrated African American of his time both [in the US] and abroad."
Early life and education Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1904 and baptized at the city's Second Baptist Church. When Ralph was a child, his family moved to Toledo, Ohio, where his father looked for work. They returned to Detroit in 1909 after his sister Grace was born, with the help of their maternal aunt, Ethel Johnson. Their father did not live with the family again after Ohio and had not been "a good provider". But he followed them when they moved to New Mexico.
Because of the declining health of his mother and uncle, the family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1915. His mother, "a musically inclined woman who contributed much to what her son called a household 'bubbling over with ideas and opinions, died in 1917 from tuberculosis, and his uncle shortly thereafter. Thereafter, Bunche was raised by his maternal grandmother, Lucy Taylor Johnson, whom he credited with instilling in him his pride in his race and his self-belief.
In 1918, Lucy Taylor Johnson moved with the two Bunche grandchildren to the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Bunche was a brilliant student, a debater, athlete and the valedictorian of his graduating class at Jefferson High School. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a political science student, and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1927 as the valedictorian of his class. Using the money his community raised for his studies, a one-year Rosenwald fellowship, from philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, which enabled him to travel to Africa to study Administration in Togoland and Dahomey, and a graduate scholarship at Harvard University, he earned a doctorate in political science.
Academic career Bunche earned a master's degree in political science in 1928 and a doctorate in 1934, while he was already teaching in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, a historically black college. At the time, it was typical for doctoral candidates to start teaching before completion of their dissertations. He was the first African American to gain a PhD in political science from an American university. Bunche's 1934 dissertation, "French Administration in Togoland and Dahomey", won the Toppan Prize for the best dissertation on comparative politics in the Department of Government at Harvard University. The dissertation examined the mandates system of the League of Nations, arguing that the system was indistinguishable from formal empire.
From 1936 to 1938, Bunche studied anthropology and conducted postdoctoral research at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and at the London School of Economics, and later at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
He published his first book, A World View of Race, in 1936, arguing that "race is a social concept which can be and is employed effectively to rouse and rationalize emotions [and] an admirable device for the cultivation of group prejudices." In 1940, Bunche served as the chief research associate to Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal's landmark study of racial dynamics in the US, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. (1996 edition )
For more than two decades (1928–1950), Bunche served as chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University, where he also taught. Furthermore, he contributed to the Howard School of International Relations with his work regarding the effect racism and imperialism had on global economic systems and international relations. He was also inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society in 1956.
Bunche was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1950. He was the first Black member to be inducted into the Society since its founding in 1743. During 1953 and 1954, he served as the president of the American Political Science Association. He served as a member of the Board of Overseers of his alma mater, Harvard University from 1960 to 1965, as a member of the board of the Institute of International Education, and as a trustee of Oberlin College, Lincoln University, and New Lincoln School.
World War II years
In 1941–1943, Bunche worked in the Research and Analysis Branch (R&A) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime intelligence service, as a senior social analyst on Colonial Affairs. In 1943, he was transferred from the OSS to the State Department. He was appointed Associate Chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs under Alger Hiss. With Hiss, Bunche became 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. In 2008, the National Archives and Records Administration released a 51-page PDF of his OSS records, which is available online.
United Nations Near the close of World War II in 1944, Bunche took part in planning for the United Nations at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, held in Washington, D.C. He was an adviser to the US delegation for the Charter Conference of the United Nations held in 1945, when the governing document was drafted. Together with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Bunche was instrumental in the creation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Bunche urged African Americans to take UN positions. "Negroes ought to get busy and prepare to obtain some of the jobs in the United Nations' set-up," he counseled. "There are going to be all kinds of jobs and Negroes should attempt to get jobs on all levels. Some organization should be working on this now."
According to the United Nations document "Ralph Bunche: Visionary for Peace", during his 25 years of service to the United Nations, he
Decolonization Bunche's work to end colonialism began early in his academic career. Over time, he became a leading scholar and expert of the impact of colonialism on subjugated peoples. He developed close relationships with many anti-colonial leaders and intellectuals from the Caribbean and Africa, in particular during his field research and his time at the London School of Economics. Bunche characterized economic policies in colonies and mandates as exploitative, and argued that the colonial powers misrepresented the nature of their rule. He argued that the Permanent Mandates Commission needed expanded powers to investigate how the mandates were governed.
Bunche's work on decolonization was influenced by the work of Raymond Leslie Buell. However, Bunche disagreed with Buell on the relative merits of British and French colonial rule. Bunche argued that British rule was not more progressive than its French counterpart, claiming that it was characterized by paternalism at best and white supremacy at worst. At a speech in Cleveland, Bunche said: "The modern world has come to the realisation that there is a great moral issue involved in the perpetuation of the colonial system."
Historian Susan Pedersen describes Bunche as the "architect" of the United Nations' trusteeship regime. Bunche was a principal author of the chapters in the UN charter on non-self-determining territories and trusteeship. He was later head of the Trusteeship Division of the UN.
Arab–Israeli conflict and Nobel Peace Prize Beginning in 1947, Bunche was involved in efforts to resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict. He served as assistant to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, and thereafter as the principal secretary of the UN Palestine Commission. The committee traveled around the country in June–July 1947, where it was warmly welcomed by the Jewish community. During this time the committee also met secretly with Menachem Begin, later prime minister of Israel, then wanted by the British. Bunche described this trip as his "most exciting adventure in the Land of Israel."Secrets and lies: Scenes from UN Partition Plan, Haaretz
In 1948, he traveled to the Middle East as the chief aide to Sweden's Count Folke Bernadotte, who had been appointed by the UN to mediate the conflict. These men chose the island of Rhodes for their base and working headquarters. In September 1948, Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem by members of the underground Jewish Lehi group, which was led by Yitzhak Shamir and referred to its members as terroristsCalder Walton (2008), Intelligence and National Security. 23(4): 435-462 and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks.He Khazit (underground publication of Lehi), Issue 2, August 1943 also see Heller, p.115
Following the assassination, Bunche became the UN's chief mediator; he conducted all future negotiations on Rhodes. The representative for Israel was Moshe Dayan; he reported in memoirs that much of his delicate negotiation with Bunche was conducted over a billiard table while the two were shooting pool. Optimistically, Bunche commissioned a local potter to create unique memorial plates bearing the name of each negotiator. When the agreement was signed, Bunche presented these gifts. After unwrapping his, Dayan asked Bunche what might have happened if no agreement had been reached. "I'd have broken the plates over your damn heads," Bunche answered. For achieving the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. Nobelprize.org. December 29, 2006
Bunche continued to work for the United Nations, mediating in other strife-torn regions, including the Congo, Yemen, Kashmir, and Cyprus. Bunche was appointed Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1968. While at the UN, Bunche forged a close bond with his friend and colleague, Ambassador Charles W. Yost, with whom he had worked at the UN founding conference.