RALPH J. BUNCHE

     A renowned scholar, diplomat and statesman, Ralph
Johnson Bunche began his career as an educator and a
political scientist, and later joined the United Nations,
serving for the last twenty years of his life as a special
assistant to the General Secretary of that world body.

     Born in 1904 of a working class family in Detroit,
Michigan, the young Bunche graduated from the
University of California at Los Angeles in 1927 and the
Harvard Graduate School in 1928.  He joined the staff
of Howard University in 1928, first as a lecturer and later
as the chairman of the Department of Political Science.
In 1932, he traveled to West and North Africa on a
Rosenwald Fellowship to survey French colonial
administration.  His pamphlet A World View of Peace
was published in 1936.  The same year, he received a
two-year Social Science Research Council Fellowship
for field and research work in Africa and Europe.  He
conducted post-doctoral work in anthropology and
colonial policy at Northwestern University in 1936, the
London School of Economics in 1937 and the University
of Capetown, South Africa, in 1938.

     Bunche took a leave of absence from Howard
University in 1938 and joined the staff of the Carnegie
Corporation in conducting and organizing a
comprehensive survey of the social, political and
economic status of blacks in the United States.
Entitled The Negro in America, the survey was directed
by the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal and was
based on the field work and the extensive research
memoranda prepared by a staff of scholars and
collaborators.  In addition to coordinating various
administrative aspects of the project, Bunche conducted
several field trips in the South in 1939 and was the
author of four sizable research memoranda: A Brief and
Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership, Conceptions
and Ideologies of the Negro Problem, The Political
Status of the Negro and The Programs, Ideologies,
Tactics and Achievements of Negro Betterment and
Interracial Organizations.  These works are quoted
extensively in Myrdal's An American Dilemma
(Harper & Brothers, 1944).

     During the Second World War, Bunche worked in the
State Department first as a Senior Research Analyst in
the Office of Strategic Services and, beginning in 1944,
as an area specialist for Africa and dependent territories.
He was a member of the U.S. delegation at the founding
of the United Nations in 1945, serving consecutively as
Acting Chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs
and as Director of the Division of Trusteeship.  He
joined the Permanent Secretariat of the United Nations
in 1948 with the title of Principal Director of the
Trusteeship Council.  He was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for his mediation of the Armistice Agreement
between Israel and the Arab states in 1948, and was
credited for his role in organizing the U.N. Green Berets.
He also played a major role in the day-to-day work of the
organization and enjoyed a wide reputation for his
integrity, his commitment to world peace and his gift as a
negotiator and administrator.  Gravely ill toward the end
of his life, he retired from the United Nations in 1971,
the year of his death.

     The Ralph Bunche Collection documents the personal
life and professional career of this prominent statesman,
from his enrollment at the University of California to his
retirement in 1971.  It consists, for the most part, of
correspondence and family papers, photographs,
writings, artifacts, administrative and academic files from
Howard University, materials from the Carnegie-Myrdal
Study, memorabilia, and working papers of the United
Nations' Trusteeship Council.  The collection was
complemented by a later addition of private papers kept
by Bunche in his office at the United Nations.  This
second accession includes correspondence, writings and
other papers documenting his World War II service,
working documents of the Trusteeship Council relating
to the 1947 partition of Palestine, interviews and articles
authored by Bunche in the 1960s, and files on Martin
Luther King, Jr. the Nobel Peace Prize and the United
Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo.