Ralph Johnson Bunche (August 7, 1904-1971) was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father, Fred Bunche, was a barber in a shop having a clientele of whites only; his mother, Olive (Johnson) Bunche, was an amateur musician; his grandmother, «Nana» Johnson, who lived with the family, had been born into slavery. When Bunche was ten years old, the family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the hope that the poor health of his parents would improve in the dry climate. Both, however, died two years later. His grandmother, an indomitable woman who appeared Caucasian «on the outside» but was «all black fervor inside»¹, took Ralph and his two sisters to live in Los Angeles. Here Ralph contributed to the family’s hard pressed finances by selling newspapers, serving as house boy for a movie actor, working for a carpet-laying firm, and doing what odd jobs he could find.

His intellectual brilliance appeared early. He won a prize in history and another in English upon completion of his elementary school work and was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, where he had been a debater and all-around athlete who competed in football, basketball, baseball, and track. At the University of California at Los Angeles he supported himself with an athletic scholarship, which paid for his collegiate expenses, and with a janitorial job, which paid for his personal expenses. He played varsity basketball on championship teams, was active in debate and campus journalism, and was graduated in 1927, summa cum laude, valedictorian of his class, with a major in international relations.

With a scholarship granted by Harvard University and a fund of a thousand dollars raised by the black community of Los Angeles, Bunche began his graduate studies in political science. He completed his master’s degree in 1928 and for the next six years alternated between teaching at Howard University and working toward the doctorate at Harvard. The Rosenwald Fellowship, which he held in 1932-1933, enabled him to conduct research in Africa for a dissertation comparing French rule in Togoland and Dahomey. He completed his dissertation in 1934 with such distinction that he was awarded the Toppan Prize for outstanding research in social studies. From 1936 to 1938, on a Social Science Research Council fellowship, he did postdoctoral research in anthropology at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and Capetown University in South Africa.

Throughout his career, Bunche has maintained strong ties with education. He chaired the Department of Political Science at Howard University from 1928 until 1950; taught at Harvard University from 1950 to 1952; served as a member of the New York City Board of Education (1958-1964), as a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University (1960-1965), 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.

Bunche has always been active in the civil rights movement. At Howard University he was considered by some as a young radical intellectual who criticized both America’s social system and the established Negro organizations, but generally he is thought of as a moderate. From his experience as co-director of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College in 1936, added to his firsthand research performed earlier, he wrote A World View of Race (1936). He participated in the Carnegie Corporation’s well-known survey of the Negro in America, under the direction of the Swedish sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal, which resulted in the publication of Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944). He was a member of the «Black Cabinet» consulted on minority problems by Roosevelt’s administration; declined President Truman’s offer of the position of assistant secretary of state because of the segregated housing conditions in Washington, D. C.; helped to lead the civil rights march organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965; supported the action programs of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and of the Urban League. Bunche has not himself formed organizations, nor has he aspired to positions of administrative leadership in existing civil rights organizations. Rather, he has exerted his influence personally in speeches and publications, especially during the twenty-year period from 1945 to 1965. His message 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»².

Ralph Bunche’s enduring fame arises from his service to the U. S. government and to the UN. An adviser to the Department of State and to the military on Africa and colonial areas of strategic military importance during World War II, Bunche moved from his first position as an analyst in the Office of Strategic Services to the desk of acting chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs in the State Department. He also discharged various responsibilities in connection with international conferences of the Institute of Pacific Relations, the UN, the International Labor Organization, and the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission.

In 1946, UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie «borrowed» Bunche from the State Department and placed him in charge of the Department of Trusteeship of the UN to handle problems of the world’s peoples who had not yet attained self-government. He has been associated with the UN ever since.

From June of 1947 to August of 1949, Bunche worked on the most important assignment of his career – the confrontation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. He was first appointed as assistant to the UN Special Committee on Palestine, then as principal secretary of the UN Palestine Commission, which was charged with carrying out the partition approved by the UN General Assembly. In early 1948 when this plan was dropped and fighting between Arabs and Israelis became especially severe, the UN appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator and Ralph Bunche as his chief aide. Four months later, on September 17, 1948, Count Bernadotte was assassinated, and Bunche was named acting UN mediator on Palestine. After eleven months of virtually ceaseless negotiating, Bunche obtained signatures on armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab States.

Bunche returned home to a hero’s welcome. New York gave him a «ticker tape» parade up Broadway; Los Angeles declared a «Ralph Bunche Day ». He was besieged with requests to lecture, was awarded the Spingarn Prize by the NAACP in 1949, was given over thirty honorary degrees in the next three years, and the Nobel Peace Prize for 1950.

Bunche still works for the UN. From 1955 to 1967, he served as undersecretary for Special Political Affairs and since 1968 has been undersecretary-general. During these years he has taken on many special assignments. When war erupted in the Congo in 1960, Dag Hammarskjöld, then secretary-general of the UN, appointed him as his special representative to oversee the UN commitments there. He has shouldered analogous duties in Cyprus, Kashmir, and Yemen.

Replying to an interviewer on the UN’s intervention in international crises, Bunche remarked that the «United Nations has had the courage that the League of Nations lacked – to step in and tackle the buzz saw»³. Ralph Bunche has supplied a part of that courage.⁴

Selected Bibliography

Bennett, Lerone, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. 4th ed. Chicago, Johnson Publishing Co., 1969.

Bunche, Ralph J., Extended Memorandum on the Programs, Ideologies, Tactics and Achievements of Negro Betterment and Interracial Organizations. A research memorandum for use in the preparation of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma. Original typescript (1940) deposited in New York Public Library; microfilm copies made in 1968 available in the libraries of the Universities of Illinois, Iowa, and California at Berkeley.

Bunche, Ralph J., French Administration in Togoland and Dahomey. Ph.D.dissertation. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Graduate School, 1934.

Bunche, Ralph J., «Human Relations and World Peace», in Gustavus Adolphus College Bulletin, 17 (1950). An address given at Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, Minn.) Commencement and Bernadotte Memorial Dedication, June 4, 1950.

Bunche, Ralph J., «My Most Unforgettable Character», Reader’s Digest, 95 (September, 1969) 45 – 49.

Bunche, Ralph J., Native Morale in The Netherlands East Indies. Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of State for the Library of Congress, 1941.

Bunche, Ralph J., «Peace and Human Progress», in Symposium on World Cooperation and Social Progress. New York, League for Industrial Democracy, 1951.

Bunche, Ralph J., «Peace and the United Nations», the Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations. Leeds, England, University of Leeds, 1952.

Bunche, Ralph J., «United Nations Intervention in Palestine», in Colgate Lectures in Human Relations, 1949. Hamilton, N.Y., Colgate University, 1949.

Bunche, Ralph J., «What America Means to Me», as told to Irwin Ross. The American Magazine, 149 (February, 1950) 19, 122-126. Reprinted in Negro Digest (September, 1950).

Bunche, Ralph J., A World View of Race. Washington, D.C., Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936. Reissued, Port Washington, N.Y., Kennikat Press, 1968.

Flynn, James J., «Ralph Johnson Bunche: Statesman», in Negroes of Achievement in Modern America. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1970.

Hughes, Langston, «Ralph Bunche: Statesman and Political Scientist», in Famous American Negroes. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1954.

Italiaander, Rolf, Die Friedensmacher: Drei Neger erhielten den Friedens-Nobelpreis. Kassel, W. Germany, Oncken, 1965. Brief biographies of Bunche, King, and Luthuli.

Kugelmass, J. Alvin, Ralph J. Bunche: Fighter for Peace. New York, Julian Messner, 1952.

Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York, Harper, 1944.

Phifer, Gregg, «Ralph Bunche: Negro Spokesman», in American Public Address, ed. by Loren Reid. Columbia, Mo., University of Missouri Press, 1961.

1. Bunche pays tribute to this «matriarch» of the family in an autobiographical fragment in Reader’s Digest, «My Most Unforgettable Character».

2. See Gregg Phifer, «Ralph Bunche: Negro Spokesman», passim.

3. «Crisis», in The New Yorker, 43 (July 29, 1967) 23.

4. Suffering from heart disease and diabetes, Mr. Bunche resigned as UN undersecretary-general on October 1, 1971. He died on December 9, 1971.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Ralph Bunche died on December 9, 1971.