Ralph Bunche

Ralph Bunche met Ruth Harris, one of his students, in 1928, while he was teaching in Harvard University. They started dating and got married after two years on 23 June 1930. They had three children, Joan Harris Bunche, Jane Johnson Bunche, and Ralph Bunche Jr.

During his later years he suffered from diabetes mellitus and resigned from the UN because of ill health. His health worsened and he passed away on 9 December 1971. He was 68. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.

Ralph Bunche was born on 7 August 1903 in Detroit. His father was Fred Bunche, a barber, and his mother was Olive Agnes, an amateur musician. He lost his mother as a teenager and was later abandoned by his father as well.

Later, Bunche and his sister were taken in by his maternal grandmother, Lucy Taylor Johnson, and they grew up in Los Angeles. His grandmother strongly supported and encouraged the young boy in his education. On several occasions, he had to support the poverty-stricken family by doing odd jobs such as cleaning, carpet-laying, etc.

He graduated in 1927 from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he had studied on scholarships. Later, he pursued and earned a Master’s degree from Harvard University in 1928, after which he started teaching there. Six years later, in 1934, he earned a Ph. D. as well, in Government and International Relations.

In 1936, he went to London School of Economics in England, to pursue postdoctoral research in anthropology, and later to the University of Cape Town in South Africa to pursue further research.

Ralph Bunche, being the descendent of a slave, could understand the plight of the African Americans which is why he was deeply concerned about race relations. He was an expert in the problems of colonialism, and he served as co-director of the Instititute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College.

In 1940 he worked as an investigative researcher and a writer for ‘An American Dilemma,’ a Swedish sociologist’s study of racism in America. During the Second World War, he joined the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) as a senior social analyst. He also worked as a part of the National Defense Program, and later in the U.S. State Department, where he became one of the main planners behind the formation of the United Nations.

In 1947, the then UN’S Secretary General, Trygve Lie asked him to join the UN Secretariat as director of the Trusteeship Division. The same year, he joined the UN Special Committee on Palestine as well. The Arabs were refusing to accept the UN plan of dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, leading to the first Arab-Israeli war.

When Ralph Bunche’s supervisor, who was the UN’s chief negotiator, got assassinated in 1948, Bunche took his place and successfully led the difficult negotiations between the Arabs and the Israeli groups, finally reaching an agreement in 1949. It was this achievement that won him the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.

He later held other important positions in the UN, including being the director of the peacekeeping operations in the Suez Area of the Middle East in 1956, in Congo in 1960, and in Cyprus in 1964.

‘World View of Race’ was the first book written and published by Ralph Bunche. The book deals with how racial classifications appeared in North America as well as many other parts of the world, as a form of social division, based on the belief that it was nature’s way of division between human groups. He also analysed social policies, folk beliefs and practices of North Americans regarding race.

‘An African American in South Africa’ was another one of his well-known books, where he recounted his experiences in South Africa, a country he had visited on a travel grant and spent three months.