Ralph Bunche
American political scientist (1904–1971)
Who was Ralph Bunche?
Ralph Bunche lived from August 7, 1904 to December 10, 1971. Bunche served on the US delegation to both the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 and United Nations Conference on International Organization in 1945 that drafted the UN charter. In 1948, Bunche became an acting mediator for the Middle East, negotiating an armistice between Egypt and Israel.
Historical significance
Ralph Johnson Bunche ( BUNCH; August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in the Arab–Israeli conflict. He is the first black Nobel laureate and the first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was involved in the formation and early administration of the United Nations (UN), serving as the under‑secretary‑general and briefly the acting secretary-general in 1953, and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous UN peacekeeping operations. He then served on the American delegation to the first session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1946 and joined the UN as head of the Trusteeship Department, beginning a long series of troubleshooting roles and responsibilities related to decolonization.
