ABSTRACT
Ralph Johnson Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan. He received his early education in Los Angeles, his B.A. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. Bunche did post doctoral work in anthropology at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Capetown, South Africa. He received post doctoral fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and the Rosenwald Foundation to pursue studies in South and East Africa and in Malaya. In 1939 Bunche was a staff member of the Carnegie Corporation Survey of the Negro in America, whose findings were later published as The American Dilemma. He has taught at the University of California and Howard University, and for two years he was Professor of Government at Harvard University. For some years Dr. Bunche was a social science analyst in charge of research on Africa and other colonial areas in the British Empire section of the Office of Strategic Services. From 1944 to 1947 he was with the U.S. Department of State. He was assistant secretary to the U.S. delegation to Dumbarton Oaks in 1944, and adviser to various other U.S. delegations. From 1946 to 1954 he was Director of the Division of U.N. Trusteeship, and during that period acted as Principal Secretary for the United Nations Palestine Commission and as United Nations Mediator in Palestine; in 1960 he was sent as Special U.N. Representative to the Congo. Dr. Bunche has been a member of the board of higher education in New York and winner of the Spingarn Medal and of the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1958 he has been Under Secretary for Special Political Affairs at the United Nations.
