We just finished celebrating the birthday of our first black president, Barack Obama, on August 4. Yet it seems few people will be marking August 7, the birth date of a black man who broke national and international barriers as a “first” in multiple arenas. Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1904, this man was most notably the first black recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in 1950. This man was Ralph Johnson Bunche.
In the preface to Ralph Bunche, The Man and His Times, Benjamin Rivlin wrote:
When Ralph Bunche died on 9 December 1971, several thousand people filled Riverside Church in New York City to pay tribute to this first black man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Extensive obituaries were carried in newspapers and magazines throughout the world. Panegyrical editorials extolled his singular and outstanding contributions to the furtherance of international peace, human rights, and brotherhood among all peoples. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, in the New York Times of 10 December 1971 acclaimed Bunche as "an international institution in his own right, transcending both nationality and race in a way that is achieved by so few." The New Yorker, devoting " The Talk of the Town" section of its 1 January 1972 issue entirely to Bunche, noted that he "was one of the greatest Americans of our clouded and mind-numbing times." Bunche was not only an outstanding personality of his times, but he left an important legacy for the future, particularly for our times.
Growing up during the 1950s and ‘60s in a politically aware household, Dr. Bunche was often the topic of discussion around our dinner table. He was also a source of pride as we watched him negotiate and interact with heads of state and governments, especially on the the African continent where countries like Ghana were establishing independence from colonial rule.
I took an informal survey last week by talking with family, friends here at Daily Kos, academic colleagues, and people I came into contact with at the doctor’s office, at the farmer’s market, and at a political gathering. I asked some of them if they knew who the first black Nobel Peace Prize winner was. Those few who had an answer proffered the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or Nelson Mandela. Of others, I simply asked, “What do you know about Dr. Ralph Bunche?” Sadly, the answers were overwhelmingly “Nothing,” or “Who?”
How could this amazing man have been erased from our collective historical memory in such a short period of time? Who knows the answer. We can, however, take steps to correct it.
Let’s take that step now.
In recent years, countless people have seen images of Dr. King marching from Selma to Montgomery, especially given recent films and anniversaries. How many realize that the man in the grey hat and shades marching right next to Dr. King is Dr. Bunche? Is it common to mistakenly think, given his fair complexion, that this is one of the white marchers?
Bunche, like many of us who are black in the U.S., had a mixed ancestry—the legacy of enslavement. He was descended from both free people of color and an enslaved woman who gave birth to the children of her Irish plantation owner.
From his Nobel Committee biography:
His father, Fred Bunche, was a barber in a shop having a clientele of whites only; his mother, Olive (Johnson) Bunche, was an amateur musician; his grandmother, «Nana» Johnson, who lived with the family, had been born into slavery. When Bunche was ten years old, the family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the hope that the poor health of his parents would improve in the dry climate. Both, however, died two years later. His grandmother, an indomitable woman who appeared Caucasian «on the outside» but was «all black fervor inside»1, took Ralph and his two sisters to live in Los Angeles. Here Ralph contributed to the family's hard pressed finances by selling newspapers, serving as house boy for a movie actor, working for a carpet-laying firm, and doing what odd jobs he could find.
His intellectual brilliance appeared early. He won a prize in history and another in English upon completion of his elementary school work and was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, where he had been a debater and all-around athlete who competed in football, basketball, baseball, and track. At the University of California at Los Angeles he supported himself with an athletic scholarship, which paid for his collegiate expenses, and with a janitorial job, which paid for his personal expenses. He played varsity basketball on championship teams, was active in debate and campus journalism, and was graduated in 1927, summa cum laude, valedictorian of his class, with a major in international relations.
His educational accomplishments spanned several disciplines:
Bunche earned a master's degree in political science in 1928 and a doctorate in 1934, while he was already teaching in Howard University's Department of Political Science. At the time, it was typical for doctoral candidates to start teaching before completion of their dissertations. He was the first African American to gain a PhD in political science from an American university. He published his first book, World View of Race, in 1936. From 1936 to 1938, Ralph Bunche conducted postdoctoral research in anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE), and later at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
At UCLA, the Center for African-American studies is named for Dr. Bunche, and in 2004 the UCLA library held a Centenary Celebration of his life and work which included rare photos of his early life.
In 2001, PBS aired the documentary Ralph Bunche, An American Odyssey, directed by William Greaves and narrated by Sidney Poitier.
The film was based on the biography of Bunche by Brian Urquhart, which had the same name.
Ralph Bunche was instrumental ― sometimes at great personal risk ― in finding peaceful solutions to incendiary conflicts around the world, while at the same time he was never far from the realities of racial prejudice. Bunche rose from modest circumstances to become the foremost international mediator and peacekeeper of his time, winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize and key drafter of the United Nations charter. Drawing on Bunche's personal papers and on his many years as Bunche's colleague at the UN, Brian Urquhart's elegant biography delineates a man with a zest for life as well as unsurpassed integrity of purpose. "Brian Urquhart brings [Bunche] back to life with a splendid biography. . . . Bunche emerges here as one of the major American diplomatic figures of this century and one of the towering leaders in African American history."―Arnold Rampersad, Princeton University At once a splendid biography of a very brave and remarkable American, a vivid account of the struggle for racial justice, and an indispensable introduction to the dilemmas of international peacekeeping."―Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The book and film also cover the attacks on Bunche by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee.
During the McCarthy era in the 1950's, the search to identify Communist sympathizers in international organizations led to Bunche. His attackers focused on his involvement with the National Negro Congress, an organization he helped found to advance the common interests of Black and white workers. Bunche was eventually cleared of all charges and continued his work at the UN.
Ben Keppel, historian and author of The Work of Democracy: Ralph Bunche, Kenneth B. Clark, Lorraine Hansberry, and the Cultural Politics of Race, was interviewed and stated:
During the McCarthy period, [Bunche] sought to challenge directly the tenets of McCarthyism and sought to say that the real Americanism was a social Democratic faith that was inclusive of all and embodied, not the right wing, xenophobic ideas of a Joseph McCarthy, but rather the kind of New Deal social democracy that you see symbolized also by Franklin Roosevelt. Because the media. . . because, first of all, a lot of the speeches in which he did this were not widely covered, and second of all, because there has always been unease until very recently, and some might argue it's still true, with an African-American intellectual expressing very, very profoundly, sharply drawn political views. It happened to Robeson and to Bunche.
In a time period without Twitter, cable, and Facebook, most Americans (black Americans included) listened to radio.
One such radio program was titled Destination Freedom. One episode was titled “Peace Mediator: The Story of Dr. Ralph Bunche.”
Destination Freedom ran from 1948 to 1950 and was the story of the triumph of African-American civil rights. Richard Durham's Destination Freedom premiered on June 27, 1948 on Chicago radio and his vision was to reeducate the masses on the image of African American society, since it was tainted with stereotypes that threatened to rip its culture apart. Some of the heroes of the fight for civil rights were, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, and Lena Horne. Tonight's Story: Peace Mediator; The Story Of Dr Ralph Bunche Original Air Date: February 20, 1949 Episode Number: 34
While traveling the world and negotiating with world leaders, Bunche was acutely aware of racism back home. In a Black History Month piece for The Root titled “Ralph Bunche: A Diplomat Who Would Not Negotiate on Race,” Steven J. Niven wrote:
Lauded for diplomacy that was discreet in public but candid in private, Bunche returned to the U.S. to be welcomed by a ticker tape parade on Broadway in New York City, academic-post offers and Truman’s request that he return to Washington to help guide U.S. foreign policy. Bunche was clearly the unequaled choice for the State Department post, but he turned Truman down, initially stating that he wanted to continue his work at the U.N. But it was soon revealed that his decision was driven by an intense opposition to living and working in Washington, D.C., and its Virginia suburbs, where he would have had to face the daily indignities of Jim Crow.
He had endured racial slights during his years at Howard and in the State Department. But as he told his friend and former colleague at State, Dean Rusk—sent by Truman to lobby him—one particular incident explained why he could not return to segregation and second-class citizenship in Washington. The case involved the family dog, which had died. The Bunche children wanted to have the pet buried in a pet cemetery, but when their father went to make the arrangements, he discovered that the cemetery was segregated, with one section for the pets of white owners and a separate space for the pets of African Americans. In a Fourth of July radio broadcast, Bunche declared in public what he had told Rusk and Truman in private: that “living in the nation’s capital is like serving out a [prison] sentence for any Negro who detests segregation and discrimination.”
In the context of the Cold War battle for supremacy, Bunche knew that his remarks echoed Soviet critiques of U.S. hypocrisy on human rights. But he believed that America had to uphold the same values of democracy and equality of opportunity at home that it claimed to be supporting in Africa and Asia. One year later, Bunche would become the first person of African descent to win a Nobel Prize, awarded for his leadership of the Middle East peace process.
At a time when many of us worldwide are focused on ISIL, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Israel, and Palestine, it is important to note that Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his role as a U.N. mediator in the Middle East.
In 1950 the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the first non-white person, the African-American and United Nations (UN) official Ralph Bunche. He received the Peace Prize for his efforts as mediator between Arabs and Jews in the Israeli-Arab war in 1948-1949. These efforts resulted in armistice agreements between the new state of Israel and four of its Arab neighbours: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
He had mixed feelings about his role and the outcome:
Personally, Bunche believed that the Palestinian Arabs were the big losers in the conflict, and, in fact, the agreements sealed the fate of the UN's plan for an independent Palestinian state. The Israelis kept almost all the land they had conquered. Israel had expanded from the UN-allocated 55% of British ruled Palestine to 79%. Jordan and Egypt took what was left for the Palestinian Arabs. The armistice agreements were intended as the basis for peace negotiations within a year, but these never took place. Although the UN and the United States called for the rights of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, this never happened. The fate of the Palestinian refugees remained an unsolved problem.
In his Nobel Prize lecture titled “Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time,” Bunche stated:
Unfortunately, there may yet be some in the world who have not learned that today war can settle nothing, that aggressive force can never be enough, nor will it be tolerated. If this should be so, the pitiless wrath of the organized world must fall upon those who would endanger the peace for selfish ends. For in this advanced day, there is no excuse, no justification, for nations resorting to force except to repel armed attack.
The world and its peoples being as they are, there is no easy or quick or infallible approach to a secure peace. It is only by patient, persistent, undismayed effort, by trial and error, that peace can be won. Nor can it be won cheaply, as the taxpayer is learning. In the existing world tension, there will be rebuffs and setbacks, dangerous crises, and episodes of violence. But the United Nations, with unshakable resolution, in the future as in the past, will continue to man the dikes of peace. In this common purpose, all states, irrespective of size, are vital.
Many of the people who knew and worked with Bunche honor his role in the Middle East, but feel his most important contributions were made in the struggle against colonialism, and his assistance to new nations throwing off the yoke and gaining independence.
After the film premiere of American Odyssey in Washington D.C., a symposium and panel was held at the Library of Congress.
The symposium was moderated by Ambassador Donald McHenry, former United Nations permanent representative, and panelists included Brian Urquhart, former U.N. undersecretary general and author of Ralph J. Bunche, An American Life (1993), on which the film was based; Benjamin Rivlin, former Bunche assistant and editor of Ralph Bunche: The Man and His Times (1990); Robert Edgar, professor of African studies at Howard University and editor of An African-American in South Africa: The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche in South Africa, 1937 (1992); and Ronald Walters, a professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and former chairman of the Political Science Department at Howard University.
What interested me were these remarks by Ambassador McHenry:
In his opening remarks, Ambassador McHenry noted that, while there are those who say that Bunche's greatest contribution was in peacekeeping, he believes it was in the area of decolonization. "The [U.N.] charter was a compromise when it came to decolonization. The British, French and colonial powers had no intention in 1945 of granting independence to those countries under their control. … The compromise was to separate the so-called trusteeship system [which Bunche was very instrumental in writing] from the so-called non-self-governing system. The former would be more progressive, [with] considerable international oversight, and the goals would be self-government or independence. … In the non-self-governing territories section [of the U.N. Charter] those provisions do not exist."
The goal is to promote self-government not independence. Mr. McHenry continued: "Even though there was a compromise of the trusteeship system, the precedents set in the trusteeship system would soon lead to the same kinds of changes and oversight for most of the colonies [under the non-self-governing system]. … And when I think of Bunche, it is this pioneering work in terms of the oversight of the international community for those persons who were not yet governing themselves that I think history will say he had his greatest impact."
Too often we forget the world map that once was dominated by colonial powers, and the major struggles for independence that resulted.
Bunche believed that self-determination of colonial peoples was critical to the maintenance of international order and world peace. He facilitated this by setting up economic and technical assistance programs for the newly independent nations and used the media to focus world attention on the issue of decolonization.
In a time when we have a bully running for president on the Republican ticket who is clearly clueless about statesmanship and diplomacy, and who spews hate and xenophobia, I hear and concur with Ralph Bunche’s words:
“I have a deep-seated bias against hate and intolerance. I have a bias against racial and religious bigotry. I have a bias against war and a bias for peace. I have a bias that leads me to believe in the essential goodness of my fellow men; which leads me to believe that no problem of human relations is ever insoluble”.