Black brilliance: Ralph Bunche, Middle East peace broker

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN DIPLOMACY

Ralph Bunche won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize, making him the first Black American to do so.

Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971) won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for building a truce between Israel and Arab states. 

After earning undergraduate and master’s degrees at UCLA in 1928, Bunche spent six years alternated between teaching at Howard University and working toward a doctorate at Harvard. The Rosenwald Fellowship, which he held in 1932-1933, enabled him to conduct research in Africa for a dissertation comparing French rule in Togoland and Dahomey. 

Bunche completed his dissertation in 1934 with such distinction that he was awarded the Toppan Prize for outstanding research in social studies. From 1936-38, on a Social Science Research Council fellowship, he did postdoctoral research in anthropology at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and Capetown University in South Africa.

Bunche’s fame arises from his service to the U.S. government and United Nations. In 1946, UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie borrowed Bunche from the State Department and placed him in charge of the Department of Trusteeship of the UN to handle problems of peoples who had not yet attained self-government. 

From 1947-49, Bunche worked on the most important assignment of his career – the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. He was appointed assistant to the UN Special Committee on Palestine, then principal secretary of the UN Palestine Commission, which was responsible for carrying out the partition approved by the UN General Assembly. 

In 1948 when the plan was scrapped and fighting between Arabs and Israelis intensified, the UN appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator and Bunche his chief aide. On Sept.17, 1948, Bernadotte was assassinated, and Bunche was named acting UN mediator on Palestine. 

After 11 months of ceaseless negotiating, Bunche obtained signatures on armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab States, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

From 1955-67, Bunche was UN undersecretary for special political affairs and in 1968 was appointed undersecretary general. During these years he took on special assignments. 

When war erupted in the Congo in 1960, Dag Hammarskjöld, then secretary-general of the UN, appointed Bunche as his special representative to oversee the UN commitments there. He assumed similar duties in Cyprus, Kashmir, and Yemen.

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