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.