Bunche attended elementary school in Detroit ( Mich. ), Toledo ( Ohio ) and Knoxville ( Tenn. ) between 1910 and 1914 when his family, because of his mother's ill health, moved to Albuquerque (N.M.) where he continued his schooling and where he reported his first encounter with racial discrimination. Orphaned in 1917, he moved to Los Angeles to live with his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Lucy Taylor Johnson, and his mother's sisters and brother. He graduated with honors from the Los Angeles 30th Street Intermediate School where he was assigned to "practical" courses because he was a Negro until his grandmother insisted that he be given an academic course to prepare him for college. Throughout his life Bunche proudly acknowledged his grandmother's influence, instilling in him pride and determination to succeed.

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In 1922, he 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. While in high school he worked as a newsboy for the Los Angeles Times and in his last year as a carpet layer. 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. According to a fellow graduate student, Robert C. Weaver, (the first black member of a presidential cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the administration of Lyndon Johnson, "Bunche was extremely attractive, quite vocal, articulate ... [He] had an uncanny ability to produce stupendous amounts of work over long sustained periods of application .. [which] maximized the impact of his knowledge, the brilliance of his personality, and was ... the chief factor in his spectacular career."

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 for the 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.  

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In 1930, Bunche married Ruth Ethel Harris, a first-grade teacher in Washington , originally from Montgomery , Alabama . The Bunches had three children, Joan, Jane and Ralph Johnson, Jr.

At Howard University , Bunche established and chaired the Political Science Department, and served for a time as an assistant to President Mordecai Johnson. Howard University in the 1930s was the intellectual center of young black scholar-activists, concerned with the persistent second class status of the American black population - confronting racism, segregation, poverty, and powerlessness. Bunche was a leading member of this group; his home, on the Howard University campus, serving as a gathering place. In particular, in the '30s Bunche was very active in the struggle for civil rights  and racial equality, emerging, in the words of Dr. Charles Henry, as "a true model of a scholar activist.” In 1936, he organized a protest against the presentation of Porgy and Bess at Washington 's National Theater because of its segregation policy. He succeeded in having the theater desegregated during the run of the play.  In 1935, he helped organize a conference at Howard University assessing the impact of the New Deal on the economic condition of Negroes and at which he presented the later published (1936) paper, "A Critique of New Deal Social Planning as It Affects Negroes." In 1936, Bunche helped found the National Negro Congress, which brought together Negro leaders from all walks of life - education, clergy, business, white collar workers and manual laborers. That year also saw the publication of his monograph, A World View of Race, in which he expounded his views on the universally pervasive and perverse manifestation of class and race. 

Bunche's interest in the problems of race spurred him to pursue post-doctoral training in anthropology and to undertake field research in Africa, all in 1936-1937. A grant from the Social Science Research Council enabled him to study at the London School of Economics and the University of Capetown in South Africa and to conduct research in East, West and South Africa. His inquiries brought him face to face with the problems confronting the African indigenous populations and deepened his understanding of the continent. While in London , he studied Swahili privately with Jomo Kenyatta, who later became the first president of independent Kenya.

Bunche's interest in race had a dual focus, domestic and foreign, primarily Africa . In the United States he became increasingly involved in efforts to understand and ameliorate conditions of the black population. In 1934, he was co-director of the summer Institute on Race Relations at Swathmore College and in 1939 he joined Gunnar Myrdal, the eminent Swedish sociologist, in collecting data throughout the South for the seminal study of the status of African-Americans, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Bunche prepared four monographs on various aspects of negro political life that were used and quoted by Myrdal as the bases of the chapters on politics. One of the monographs was published posthumously in 1973 as The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR. In February 1939, at the request of the program committee of the Republican party, Bunche prepared a study on why blacks had abandoned the Republican party in the 1932 and 1936 national elections. Bunche's report emphasized that despite the long-standing loyalty to the party of Lincoln, blacks defected from it basically because of "bread and butter" considerations and the failure of the party to address their "fundamental political objectives ... namely, enfranchisement in the South, protection of civil liberties, anti-lynching legislation, and appointment of members of the Race to policy-forming and other responsible positions." Taken together, then, towards the end of the 1930s, Bunche achieved a reputation as one of the keenest students of race relations in the United States.

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World War II gave Bunche the opportunity to shift his focus to the international arena. In 1941, he joined the Office of the Coordinator of Information as a specialist on colonialism and race relations. When this office became the Office of Strategic Services, he assumed the post of head of the Africa Section in the Research and Analysis Branch. Outside the government, as a member of the Committee on Africa , the War and Peace Aims, an influential group of academics and practitioners with African expertise, he helped prepare the 1942 publication, The Atlantic Charter and Africa from an American Standpoint. In 1944, he transferred to the State Department's postwar planning group working on the issue of the future of the colonial world. He served as a counselor on the American delegation at Dumbarton Oaks (1944) and the San Francisco Conference (1945) which drafted the United Nations Charter. Bunche played a key role in drawing up Chapters XI, XII and XIII of the UN Charter, which deal with the UN regime for colonial territories. In the fall of 1945, he was an American member of the Preparatory Commission that put the United Nations into operation and in January 1946 he performed his last governmental service as part of the American delegation to the first session of the UN General Assembly. Shortly thereafter, Bunche joined the UN Secretariat as head of the Trusteeship Department.

Bunche's focus on the condition and experience of indigenous peoples and cultures subject to colonialism paralleled and was linked to his interest in the condition and experience of black people in his own American society.  To Bunche, the condition of the American negro and that of the blacks in Africa as well as that of colonial peoples throughout the world was part and parcel of the same problem - that of racism and economic deprivation. In relationship to both set of problems,  Bunche functioned both as scholar and activist.

In 1946, the future of Palestine was among the leading issues on the agenda of the United Nations. Bunche's service on the United Nations Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), which was established to make recommendations on the future of the territory, gained him a reputation within the UN as a keen analyst of this thorny issue. When war broke out between the newly created state of Israel and its neighboring Arab states in May 1948, Bunche was designated by Secretary-General Trygve Lie as his representative in Palestine and head of the Secretariat support staff of the UN Mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden . Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem in September and Bunche, who was supposed to be with the Mediator at the time but was delayed in reaching the meeting place was appointed Acting Mediator. Through his perseverance and great diplomatic skill during the next six months, Bunche succeeded in negotiating individual armistice agreements between Israel and four Arab states, Egypt , Jordan , Syria and Lebanon.

The success brought Bunche world-wide acclaim culminating in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. In the United States he was widely hailed as the personification of the American dream as the first black to receive recognition by the world for his extraordinary achievement. Bunche's picture was on the cover of most of the leading magazines of the day. He was in constant demand as speaker and recipient of awards and honorary degrees. In 1949, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal of the National Association of Colored Peoples (NAACP) and became one its directors until his death. The same year he received and honorary Doctor of Laws from Harvard University. All told he received 69 honorary degrees and many elementary and high schools were named after him throughout the country, as was a small park opposite United Nations headquarters in New York. President Harry Truman offered him the position of Assistant Secretary of State, which Bunche declined saying that he did not wish to go back to live in Washington because it was a "jim-crow" town. Instead, Bunche chose to remain at the United Nations although he was offered and accepted appointment as professor of government at Harvard University which he never took up although he always maintained his desire to return to academia. He had become not merely an adornment at the United Nations for his success as Acting Mediator, but an almost indispensable top-level advisor and trouble-shooter to Secretary-General Lie and his successors, Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant. Elevated to the position of Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, he was instrumental in developing and administering the various UN peacekeeping and truce observation activities that came into being during his years of service: Sinai, 1956; Congo, 1960; Cyprus, 1962; Yemen, 1963; India-Pakistan, 1965. He also played an important role in establishing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Throughout his diplomatic career, first in the State Department and subsequently in the United Nations, Bunche focussed his attention on the fate of the colonial world and he can properly be considered to be one of the architects of decolonization. Similarly, he can properly be considered  to be an originator and applicator of the concept of UN peacekeeping. For two decades, as UN Under-Secretary-General – the highest post held by an American  - he played a leading role in the conception and conduct of the UN’s peacekeeping function.

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Bunche's international renown did not insulate him from becoming ensnared in U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's obsession with communists in government, including American employees in the United Nations. Bunche, whose views on race and class and anti-segregation activities in the thirties were considered radical and "Marxist", was accused of associating with known communists and belonging to communist dominated organizations, such as the National Negro Congress. In truth, he broke with this group before the outbreak of World War II because its leadership had been coopted by the American Communist Party. In a twelve hour hearing before the International Organizations Employee Loyalty Board in May 1954, Bunche denied the accusation and the board rendered a "favorable loyalty determination." In 1963, President Lyndon Johnson presented Bunche with the Medal of Freedom, which he had been designated to receive by President John F. Kennedy.

Men and women are usually products of their times but only a few can be said to have influenced their times. Bunche was such a person. The little more than five decades between Bunche's student days and his death were marked by many momentous developments in the world, none more telling than the emergence of the resolute movement of "people of color" in the United States and throughout the world, for freedom and equality, and the establishment of new world institutions dedicated to the achievement of peace  and justice among all peoples. In assessing Bunche's career it should be noted that, although it falls into two distinct parts - domestic and international, they were really part of a single commitment - as scholar and activist - to improve the human condition particularly the appalling state of people of color in his native country and throughout the world. For Bunche, civil rights in the United States and human rights in the international arena were part of one continuum. When Bunche achieved the status of diplomat extraordinaire, the embodiment of the UN ideals and super international civil servant, he also became one of the most noted and admired black person of his time in the United States. Although barred by UN rules from becoming involved in domestic politics, Bunche had an understanding with three Secretaries-General under whom he served that he could speak his mind on racism in the United States, which he did often. His international position did not deter him in 1965 from marching along side Rev. Martin Luther King in Selma, even though his body was racked with pain from phlebitis and diabetes.  Nor did it deter him from privately and publicly expressing his sometimes critical views of aspects of the civil rights movement as well as his support for its aims. Most noted at the time (1967) was Bunche's opposition to Dr. King's efforts to amalgamate the civil-rights and anti-Viet-Nam war movements as "a serious tactical error ... bound to alienate many friends and supporters of the civil rights movement and greatly weaken it." 

Bunche retired from the United Nations early in 1971 because of ill health and died on December 9th. Bunche's life was one of great personal achievement and lasting importance for the United States and the world. Ralph Bunche was an American black who rose from very modest origins to become one of the world's foremost and admired figures, acclaimed both in his own country and the world at-large. The American black leader, A. Philip Randolph, noted: "Important as Dr. Bunche's work in the United Nations has been, I remember him best for his early commitment to the civil rights campaigns during the 1930's and 1940's. Our movement was young then, and it was totally committed young people like Ralph Bunche whose spirit and resilience, in the face of overwhelming odds, gave strength to the rest of us."  U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations, under whom Bunche served described Bunche as "An international institution in his own right, transcending both nationality and race in a way that is achieved by very few."

Benjamin Rivlin     

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