A National Treasure Right in Queens

Ralph Bunche was an important American, one whose importance seems to be lost to a modern generation. I'm happy to bring him to your attention.

(Photo via Rare Newspapers.com)

Many in this blog’s readership were not around when this amazing man won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. I wasn’t born yet, either, but in my house growing up, we knew Ralph Bunche’s name, even if we children had only a very hazy idea of who he was, or what he did. My parents were as proud of him as if he had been a relative, or a good friend. You see, my childhood took place at a time when black people, (we were still Negro then) rarely made the news for anything good, unless you were an entertainer or an athlete. And most certainly, black people never made the news for international affairs - that was just unheard of. But there he was…Ralph Bunche, not caring that he was going where no American Negro had gone before, he was just doing his job.

My parents probably knew that the Bunche family lived not all that far from us. We lived in St. Albans, and the Bunche house was in Kew Gardens. Not all that far at all, but a world away. Mr. Bunche’s life was a world away, as well, in the newly built halls of the United Nations, working with the leaders of the entire world. Kew Gardens was the Promised Land, the street where the Bunche family lived, a lush suburban collection of fine homes on landscaped lawns. Ralph Bunche made us proud; the way Barak Obama would make us proud almost sixty years later. I understand my parent’s pride, now that I am an adult.

Ralph Bunche was born in 1903, in Detroit. His father was a barber and his mother was an aspiring musician. He lived with his two sisters and his grandmother, who had been born in slavery. When he was twelve years old, both of his parents died from poor health, and his grandmother took the three children to Los Angeles to live. Young Ralph excelled in school, showing an impressive academic brilliance, as well as excellent debating skills and athletic prowess. He entered the University of California with a scholarship, and worked as a janitor at night for personal money. He majored in international relations, and graduated summa cum laude, valedictorian of his class, in 1927.

He received a scholarship from Harvard, and with a gift of $1,000 raised by the black community in Los Angeles, he came east, and completed his masters in 1928. He worked for the next six years on his doctorate while teaching at Howard University, in Washington DC. He became the first African American to be awarded a PhD in Government and International Relations from Harvard University.  The next ten years were spent in research in Africa, a prize winning dissertation, other scholastic awards and accolades, and post graduate work in anthropology at Northwestern, the London School of Economics, and even the University of Capetown, South Africa before apartheid.

(Ralph Bunche UCLA Class portrait, 1927 via library at UCLA)

He was the Chair of the Political Science Department at Howard, from 1928 to 1950, taught at Harvard between 1950 and 1952, and was a member of the New York City Board of Education from 1958 to 1964. Bunche was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard between 1960 and ’65, and a trustee at Oberlin College, and Lincoln University, among other institutions of higher learning. An impressive set of credentials, indeed. Somewhere in there, he also found time to woo and marry Ruth Ethel Harris; the couple married in 1930.

Ralph Bunche’s expertise on colonial African states led to several government positions during the World War II years. It was revealed in 2008 that he had been a member of the OSS, the precursor of the CIA. After the war he took a State Department position to plan the United States’ postwar strategies towards African states. He served as an expert on African affairs at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944, which led to the formation of the United Nations, and was a participant and advisor at the historic San Francisco Conference in 1945, where the charter for the UN was drafted.

In 1946, UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie asked Bunche to leave the State Department and lead the UN’s Department of Trusteeship, which took care of problems between nations that had not yet achieved self-government.  He would be associated with the United Nations for the rest of his life. Between 1947 and 1949, Ralph Bunche would work on the most important assignment of his career; brokering a peace in Palestine. Fighting between the Arabs and proto-Israelis was getting worse.

The UN appointed Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden as mediator and Ralph Bunche as his chief aide. Four months later, on September 17, 1948, Count Bernadotte was assassinated, and Bunche was named acting UN mediator on Palestine. He spent the next 11 months tirelessly brokering a peace treaty, finally getting an armistice between Israel and Egypt, followed by one between the new state of Israel and Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

(Bunche and wife Ruth at the 1949 signing of the Arab-Israeli Armistice Agreement)

He came home a national hero, with a tickertape parade on Broadway, a Ralph Bunche Day in Los Angeles, and awards and accolades, culminating in the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. He continued to work at the UN, appointed Under-Secretary General of the UN, serving as a trouble shooter for three Secretary-Generals. He brokered peace treaties in several volatile parts of the world, and developed the mission of UN peacekeeping forces. He also was a pivotal force in the creation of two of the UN’s most important programs; the Atomic Energy Agency and the Developmental Program, which helped emerging countries. He served as Under-Secretary for over 20 years, the highest rank an American has ever achieved in that organization.

(Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 via UN fair use)

All during this time period, he also worked for civil rights for African Americans here at home. With all of the impressive work on his resume, and even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he was not be able to get a first class hotel room in Washington DC, or sit in the front of the bus in Mobile, Alabama, watch a movie downstairs in a movie theater anywhere in the South, or enroll his children in a white school in many parts of the country.

Long before the UN, Bunche was a member of the so-called “Black Cabinet” organized to consult FDR’s administration on minority problems. He declined an offer by Harry Truman to be the Assistant Secretary of State, in part because of segregated housing in Washington DC. Imagine - holding the second highest position in the State Department, able to call a meeting with the President of the United States anytime he needed to, but unable to buy a house in a white neighborhood in the nation’s capital.

(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, wife Coretta Scott King and Ralph Bunch at UN, 1964. Photo via United Nations archive)

He helped to lead the Montgomery March of Martin Luther King in 1965, and supported programs by the NAACP and the Urban League. His stance on segregation, racial prejudice and rights for blacks and other minorities was very clear: we should all have equal rights and opportunities. Racial prejudice had no basis in science, and segregation and democracy were incompatible. He proved that every day.

The Bunche family moved to 115-24 Grosvenor Road in Kew Gardens after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. The family had moved from Washington DC to New York when Dr. Bunche helped found the United Nations. Initially, the UN was headquartered in Lake Success, just across the Nassau County line, and the UN built a housing complex in Parkway Village, in Jamaica, Queens. The Bunche family lived there until 1952. But space at the complex was cramped, so they went house hunting, and found the house on Grosvenor Road.

The owner of the house was a great admirer of Ralph Bunche, so much so he lowered the price of the house for him, and using the prize money from the Nobel, the Bunche’s were able to buy the house. They moved into this large Neo-Tudor in 1952, and the family lived there until Ruth Bunche’s death in 1988.

(Bunche House at 115-24 Grosvenor Road in Kew Gardens, Queens. It is an individual NYC landmark.)

The house was built in 1927 as a part of the original Kew Gardens development. It was designed by the Brooklyn firm of Koch and Wagner. Both Arthur Koch and Charles Wagner were Brooklyn boys and both graduated from Pratt Institute. The house is a fine example of a pre-Depression era, suburban Revival house. During this time of suburban development, many homes were some kind of Revival: Tudor, Colonial, Dutch Colonial, Mediterranean, etc.

The Tudor and Medieval style houses were especially popular with developers and the public, as well. Something about stone, half-timbering, the faux exposed brick, and all of the small details, resonated as comfort, safety and prosperity to the public at large. It still does. The house sits on a small rise, surrounded by shrubbery and trees. It’s quite picturesque, and very nice. It was home to the Bunche family for over thirty years.

Ralph Bunche was able to achieve much in his lifetime, before he died in 1971. He helped make the United Nations a force for peace and economic development around the world and helped many developing countries go from colony to independent nation. World peace may never happen, but he came as close as any man to making it possible. He also showed America that an ordinary African American, given the same opportunities as any white man in America, could succeed, no- he could excel in whatever his chosen pursuit. Dr. Bunche is not remembered as much as he should be. He was indeed a great man.

(Ralph Bunche and family, 1950)