Bunche the Scholar

In 1922, Bunche graduated first in his class and as valedictorian from Jefferson High School , the first of his race to receive such a distinction. However, because of his race, he was denied election to the city-wide scholarship honor society. The same year he entered the southern branch of the University of California (later to become UCLA) on an academic scholarship, which he augmented by working at a variety of jobs, including summers on a coastwise merchant ship. At college, in addition to being an outstanding student in philosophy and political science, he was president of the debating society and a student council leader, and he excelled in football, basketball and baseball. In 1927, after graduating summa cum laude and serving as class valedictorian, he entered Harvard University , which awarded him a tuition scholarship to study political science. He received additional financial support from a black ladies' organization in Los Angeles , which established The Ralph Bunche Scholarship Fund.

After completing his M.A. in 1928, Bunche joined the faculty of Howard University in Washington, D.C., a predominantly black institution. He was awarded the Ozias Goodwin Fellowship to return to Harvard the following year to complete his courses for the Ph.D. in Government and International Relations. Over the next six years, Bunche alternated between teaching and working on his doctorate degree, which he received in 1934. A Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1932 enabled him to undertake research in West Africa for his doctoral dissertation comparing French colonial administration in Dahomey and the neighboring mandated territory, Togoland. In 1934, he was awarded the Toppan Prize for the year's best dissertation in political science at Harvard University and he became the first African- American to earn the Ph.D. in Government and International Relations there.

In 1936, he undertook postdoctoral study in anthropology at Northwestern University. That same year he was awarded a Social Science Research Council Fellowship to pursue postdoctoral studies in anthropology and colonial policy at the London School of Economics and at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and for field research in South, East, and West Africa and Asia.





<Previous l Next>