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A superb narrative biography of the international diplomat and racial pioneer-published to coincide with a major four-part PBS series based on this book. 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. ... Read more

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United Nations
This book was a good and interesting read.I would recommend it.Ralph Bunch was a very interesting character.I am sad to say that I did not even know who he was a year ago.It further displays my mis-education.He is never mentioned in Black America.It seems if we forgot he ever existed.

It is funny that during Black history month they bring out the same old tired people.Ralph was incredibly significant to the development of the United Nations.I recommend this book.
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Activist, international statesman, reluctant black leader, scholar, icon, father and husband, Ralph Bunche is one of the most complicated and fascinating figures in the history of twentieth- century America. Bunche played a central role in shaping international relations from the 1940s through the 1960s, first as chief of the Africa section of the Office of Strategic Services and then as part of the State Department group working to establish the United Nations. After moving to the U.N. as Director of Trusteeship, he became the first black Nobel Laureate in 1950 and was subsequently named Undersecretary of the U.N.

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting and valuable
The fact that Ralph Bunche is little known on university campuses nowadays just proves that white male patriarchal systems of 'scholarship' are making it almost impossible to learn about all the great African American figuresin the twentieth century. Why are we not told about him? Because we aresupposed to care about conservative white males like Churchill and TeddyRoosevelt! As a feminist and a white woman, I side completely with AfricanAmericans as they try to access their glorious past, including celebratedpeople like Ralph Bunche, who, until now, was hardly known outside thepostage stamp that featured his portrait. Not any more! ... Read more

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Biography of the African-American statesman and diplomat who was one of the founders of the United Nations and who received the Nobel Prize for his peacemaking efforts. ... Read more

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Thirty years after the greatest legislative triumphs of the civil rights movement, overcoming racism remains what Martin Luther King, Jr., once called America's unfinished "work of democracy." Why this remains true is the subject of Ben Keppel's The Work of Democracy. By carefully tracing the public lives of Ralph Bunche, Kenneth B. Clark, and Lorraine Hansberry, Keppel illuminates how the mainstream media selectively appropriated the most challenging themes, ideas, and goals of the struggle for racial equality so that difficult questions about the relationship between racism and American democracy could be softened, if not entirely evaded.

Keppel traces the circumstances and cultural politics that transformed each individual into a participant-symbol of the postwar struggle for equality. Here we see how United Nations ambassador Ralph Bunche, the first African American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, came to symbolize the American Dream while Bunche's opposition to McCarthyism was ignored. The emergence of psychologist and educator Kenneth B. Clark marked the ascendancy of the child and the public school as the leading symbols of the civil rights movement. Yet Keppel details how Clark's blueprint for "community action" was thwarted by machine politics. Finally, the author chronicles the process by which the "American Negro" became an "African American" by considering the career of playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Keppel reveals how both the journalistic and the academic establishment rewrote the theme of her prize-winning play A Raisin in the Sun to conform to certain well-worn cultural conventions and the steps Hansberry took to reclaim the message of her classic.

The Work of Democracy uses biography in innovative ways to reflect on how certain underlying cultural assumptions and values of American culture simultaneously advanced and undermined the postwar struggle for racial equality.

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Presents a biography, stressing the value of responsibility, of the Afro-American who was instrumental in the establishment of the United Nations. ... Read more

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Ralph Takes Responsibility
In this installment of the ValueTales series, Ann Donegan Johnson helps us appreciate the responsible character of Ralph Bunch (1904-1971).

The book introduces young Ralph, who grew up poor in a tumbledown house in Detroit.He worked at selling papers to "do his share" to bring in extra money for his family.When he saw something in his neighborhood that was unfair, Ralph tried to make it right.And he insisted that other people treat him fairly, too.As an adult, Ralph worked for the government, trying to fix poverty and similar problems in other countries.He helped negotiate a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that lasted for over twenty years.

Like other books in the ValueTales series, this book uses a real-life person to exemplify an important value.It is suitable for reading by children in the later elementary school grades.A "Historical Facts" section at the book's end summarizes Bunche's life in a single-page bio form suitable for adults.

Closing quote:"When you see something that needs to be done, do you take care of it?If you do, you're responsible, and people are responsible to you, too.And chances are that this might make you happier.Just like our good friend Ralph Bunche." (pp. 61-62)
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In this book, Jonathan Holloway explores the early lives and careers of economist Abram Harris Jr., sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, and political scientist Ralph Bunche--three black scholars who taught at Howard University during the New Deal and, together, formed the leading edge of American social science radicalism.

Harris, Frazier, and Bunche represented the vanguard of the young black radical intellectual-activists who dared to criticize the NAACP for its cautious civil rights agenda and saw in the turmoil of the Great Depression an opportunity to advocate class-based solutions to what were commonly considered racial problems. Despite the broader approach they called for, both their advocates and their detractors had difficulty seeing them as anything but "black intellectuals" speaking on "black issues."

A social and intellectual history of the trio, of Howard University, and of black Washington, Confronting the Veil investigates the effects of racialized thinking on Harris, Frazier, Bunche, and others who wanted to think "beyond race"--who envisioned a workers' movement that would eliminate racial divisiveness and who used social science to demonstrate the ways in which race is constructed by social phenomena. Ultimately, the book sheds new light on how people have used race to constrain the possibilities of radical politics and social science thinking. ... Read more

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A biography of a man internationally famous for his efforts towards world peace. ... Read more

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A firsthand account of South Africa as experienced by a black American in the 1930s. Ralph Bunche, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, travelled to South Africa for three months in 1937. These are his travel notes, compiled and annotated by historian Robert R. Edgar. ... Read more

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Discusses the personal and professional life of the statesman and diplomat who was one of the founders of the United Nations and who received the Nobel Prize for his peacemaking efforts. ... Read more

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Includes bibliographical references and index. A biography of Ralph Bunche, the African-American who won the Nobel peace prize in 1950. Text and photographs depict the tireless fighter for peace and human dignity who rose from modest circumstances to become the foremost mediator and peacekeeper of his time. ... Read more

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Ralph J. Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings is the only collection currently available of speeches and writings many unpublished and previously unavailable of one of this century's foremost African-American political and intellectual leaders.
Bunche was a pioneer in every sense of the word. The first black American to hold a doctorate in political science, Bunche established the political science department at Howard University and co-founded the National Negro Congress. He served as the first African- American section head in the Office of Strategic Services and later moved to the State Department. He played a major part in the delegation that established the United Nations and, when he retired as Under Secretary General, was the highest- ranking black in that organization. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and thus became the first black Nobel laureate.
Bunche's thinking and writing was broad, ranging from the political left to the center. Early works flirt with socialist or even Bolshevist ideas, while later works maintained that a flawed American democracy was better than an impending threat of Nazi-influenced fascism. Bunche was one of the first African Americans to do academic work in Africa, forcing him to think through notions of colonialism and class that would influence his work at the United Nations. Although his passion for peace and civil rights never faltered, his relationship with American black movements vascillated from an early embrace of radicalism to a significant distancing during the mid-sixties to a final rapprochement during the last years of his life. A monumental contribution, Ralph J. Bunche: Selected Speeches and Writings reasserts the thinking of a great American whose views are entirely relevant to a generation still striving for the world Bunche envisioned.
Charles P. Henry is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
From the book:
"I abhor racism as a dangerous virus, whether it is spread by white or black peoples. I seek total integration, which to me means the Negro taking his place in the very mainstream of American life . . . . My ancestors have contributed very much to the development of this country and therefore I have a vested interest in it that I intend to realize and protect."
"It seems painfully clear to me that there is no possibility in the affluent, highly industrialized and technological white-majority American society for anyone to be at once black, separate and equal."
"The colonial system in its modern version, implicitly arrogant and self-serving, was instituted and perpetuated chiefly by self-righteous and superior- minded Europeans. Its positive achievements notwithstanding, colonialism's evil legacies will bedevil the world for years to come."
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A world-renowned scholar and statesman, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche (1903–1971) began his career as an educator and a political scientist, and later joined the United Nations, serving as Undersecretary General for seventeen of his twenty-five years with that body. This African American mediator was the first person of color anywhere in the world to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In the mid-1930s, Bunche played a key role in organizing the National Negro Congress, a popular front-styled group dedicated to progressive politics and labor and civil rights reform.

A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership provides key insight into black leadership at the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Originally prepared for the Carnegie Foundation study, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Bunche's research on the topic was completed in 1940. This never-before-published work now includes an extended scholarly introduction as well as contextual comments throughout by Jonathan Scott Holloway.

Despite the fact that Malcolm X called Bunche a "black man who didn't know his history," Bunche never wavered from his faith that integrationist politics paved the way for racial progress. This new volume forces a reconsideration of Bunche's legacy as a reformer and the historical meaning of his early involvement in the civil rights movement.