The Final Years

During the last years of his life Bunche was stoic, refusing to allow increasingly poor health to interfere with his work. By early 1971, he was frequently absent from the office for repeated hospital stays. The last important meeting he attended at UN Headquarters concerned the Middle East and was held on 17 May 1971 in Secretary-General U Thant's office, where Bunche struggled to stay focused. It became clear that he would not recover his health.

In June, U Thant agreed formally to relieve Bunche of his Secretariat post. Throughout that summer and fall, Bunche's condition continued to deteriorate. He died early in the morning on 9 December 1971.

In his eulogy of Bunche, U Thant said “Ralph was both an idealist and a realist. He believed resolutely in the necessity of making the United Nations work, but he never underestimated the difficulties and frustrations of the peacemaker…He was a practical optimist who believed that whatever might go wrong in matters of peace or justice, it was never too late to try again. His love of humanity and his belief in mankind's ultimate goodness carried him through many a crisis which would have broken a lesser man.”

In 1980, “Peace Form One,” sculpted by Daniel Johnson, whose father Bunche had known in Los Angeles, was dedicated in the small park on First Avenue, opposite the main entrance to the United Nations. The park was renamed “ Ralph Bunche Park.”

Chiseled in the granite wall at the edge of the park is Bunche's favorite quotation, which he used as a student orator to preface his remarks in a debating competition at UCLA in 1926—in the words of Isaiah:

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