Author Description

Nobel Laureate, UN Under Secretary General, and American diplomat, Ralph Bunche was present at the creation of the postwar international order. Yet even before that order was launched Bunche championed one of the most consequential, but often unsung, transformations of the twentieth century: the end of colonialism and the transition, for much of Africa and Asia, from empire to sovereignty. As a scholar in the 1930s, Bunche studied the colonial system. As a mediator in postcolonial Palestine, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace to the new state of Israel and its Arab neighbors. As a rare Black man in the very white world of diplomacy, Bunche fought to ensure that new states were welcomed-and guided-into the international community. Once "the most honored African American in America," Ralph Bunche is largely forgotten today; remembered by some as a master of international diplomacy, by others as an icon of racial equality, yet little known to the public at large. Bunche merits recognition both for his extraordinary American life and for the lens he provides on two significant features of the 20th century-the creation of the postwar international order and the struggle for racial equality-that are rarely joined but deserve to be, and that he himself married in the realm of ideas and in his own person. Bunche saw no dissonance in this pairing of diplomacy and civil rights. He sought to make both America and the world more just, more free, and more fair. During his lifetime-and in part due to his efforts-nearly a billion people of color gained independence from foreign rule. The titanic global conflicts of the 20th century, from the Great War to the Cold War, are rarely viewed today through the lens of race and rights. Yet for much of the 20th century race was arguably the central principle in international relations. To Bunche racial justice was a global, not merely national, issue, and empire was one of racism's most potent and perilous guises.