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Ralph
Johnson Bunche was born in
Detroit
,
MI
.
Following the death of his parents, Bunche was
reared in
Los Angeles
by his maternal grandmother.
He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from
UCLA in 1927 and completed a doctorate in Political
Science at Harvard in 1934.
Bunche served as a professor and founding head of
the Political Science Department at
Howard
University
from 1928 to 1941, at which
point he entered government service as an analyst with
the Office of Strategic Services. In 1944, he became an
advisor to the State Department and ultimately the
U.S.
delegation to the 1945
San Francisco
conference that drafted the
charter of the new United Nations Organization.
He is considered by many to be one of the
founding fathers of the United Nations.
In 1946 Bunche joined the United Nations
Secretariat and in 1948 became chief mediator between
the Israelis and Palestinians. For his efforts, Bunche
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1950. Until his
death in 1971, Bunche held additional senior positions
at the UN, including Under Secretary for Special
Political Affairs.
Bunche is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The
Bronx. A bust
of Ralph Bunche is at
the entrance of Bunche Hall, overlooking
the Sculpture Garden at UCLA.
Ralph Bunche Park is in New York City, across First Avenue from
the United Nations headquarters.
The Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center
is located in Washington, DC on the Campus of Howard
University. Ralph Bunche’s house is in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC,
where he resided for many years.
External Links:
Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey documentary Home Page:
http://www.ralphbunche.com/
Ralph Bunche Centenary Home Page:
http://www.ralphbunchecentenary.org/
UCLA
Library Ralph Bunche Exhibit:
http://www.library.ucla.edu/bunche/
Ralph
Bunche
An
American Odyssey
Author,
Brian Urquhart
Copyright © 1993 by Brian Urquhart, All
rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data ISBN
0-393-03527-1
Prologue
On
a damp Mediterranean winter day in early January 1949,
the white aircraft of the United Nations mediator in
Palestine
brought Ralph Bunche to the
island
of
Rhodes
. He had come to undertake what was widely regarded as
an impossible task, the negotiation neighbors. On his
success rested the hope of an end to the war that had
plagued the
Middle East
since the proclamation of the state of
Israel
eight months before.
When Bunche had left
Rhodes
more than three months earlier, he was in shock from
assassination by the Stern Gang in
Jerusalem
, of his friend the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte.
Now, as Bernadotte’s successor, he faced a task as
urgent as it was daunting. In the next few months, in a
virtuoso display of personality, stamina, and skill, he
successfully negotiated the four armistice agreements
and gave the
Middle East
seven years’ respite from war, as well as the vital
first step toward a peaceful settlement- a settlement
that, tragically, has not yet come about. Some called
Bunche the new
Colossus of Rhodes
, and he was universally recognized as a major
international resource for a world in turmoil and
transition.
Bunche brought to his vocation in the United
Nation the vitality and spirit of a remarkable family,
the intellect of a scholar, the analytical skill and
experience of a field anthropologist, and the passion
for justice of a member of an oppressed minority. Before
coming to the United Nations he was already known as a
strong and radical voice in the fight for racial
equality and civil rights in the United States, as the
leading American expert on Africa and on colonial
affairs, as one of the authors of the Charter of the
United Nations, and as a determined advocate of
de-colonization.
Bunche’s achievement as mediator in
Palestine
, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, made
his name known all over the world. He continued, until
his death more than twenty years later, to work at the
United Nations as its principal negotiator of
international conflicts and keeping operations. He gave
an example of international service which has never been
matched either in its effectiveness or in its integrity.
“I rely only on reason, candor and truth,” he wrote
just before his death. “They stand firm enough without
support from emotion.”
Throughout his years of success and public
acclaim, Ralph Bunche remained as he had always been-
down-to-earth, humorous, kindly, and unpretentious. He
continued to be more concerned with achieving results
than with getting the credit for them, more interested
in people than in celebrities, more moved by struggles
of the young and the disadvantaged than by the caprices
and favors of the great and famous. He forgot neither
where he had come from nor the very real and unresolved
human problems which the UN had been set up to tackle.
He was intensely proud to be both American and black,
but was strongly critical of
America
’s failures, especially as regards his own people. He
never wavered in his conviction that the United Nation
must, and could, be made to work. As the third
secretary-general of the UN, U Thant, said of him at his
death, he was “an international institution in his own
right.”
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