Ralph Bunche Biography

Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American academic, UN diplomat as well as a political scientist. Having won the Nobel Peace Prize in the year 1950, he was the first African American to do so. He had been trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine ever since his appointment as an assistant to the UN Special Committee on Palestine and later as the Principal Secretary of the UN Palestine Commission. Eventually, after he became the Chief Mediator of the UN following the assassination of a colleague, he managed to make a peace-agreement. Bunche was also an active supporter of the civil rights movement in the United States, and he was involved with Martin Luther King’s movement on a few occasions. He was also involved in forming, organizing and administering the UN. He was an academic as well, and spent more than twenty years working in Harvard University’s Department of Political Science. He also served in the same university as a member in the Board of Overseers, and as a trustee in several educational institutions such as Oberlin College and New Lincoln School. In 2008, it was also revealed that during the Second World War, he was a member of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the precursor organization to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).