Overview

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. For nearly a decade, he was the most celebrated contemporary African American both domestically and abroad. Today he is virtually forgotten. Charles Henry's penetrating biography counters this historical tragedy, recapturing the essence of Bunche's service to America and the world. Moreover, Henry ably demonstrates how Bunche's rise and fall as a public symbol tells us as much about America as it does about Bunche. His iconic status, like that of other prominent, mainstream black figures like Colin Powell, required a constant struggle over the relative importance of his racial identity and his national identity. Henry's biography shines as both the recovered story of a classic American, and as a case study in the racial politics of public service.

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9780814735824

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Reviews

<p> This haunting book is hard to pick up, harder to put down, and still harder to forget. - Choice , May 1997

A rich and moving account of the complex life of one of the most influential black figures in twentieth-century America. -Herbert Hill,Evjue-Bascom Professor of African-American Studies, University of Wisconsin This work is a welcome addition to African American studies as well as to social and cultural history ... -Choice We need this book to remind us of the competent leadership that we enjoyed in the past. -Black Issues Book Review Thoughtful, provocative ... a first-rate study. -Library Journal Not the least of this book's many virtues is the way in which ... it bridges the gap between the concern's of Du Bois's day and those of the civil rights era. -Times Literary Supplement

A quirky biographical sketch of the sometimes forgotten Nobel laureate. Though in his youth during the 1930s, as a political science professor and administrator at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Bunche gained a reputation as something of an armchair radical, he became in later life an enduring symbol of moderation. It was Bunche the research scholar, for example, who helped to guide and write Gunnar Myrdal's mammoth study of black Americans following the 1935 Harlem riots. On the international front, Bunche was called on as a troubleshooter with the United Nations (where he was director of trusteeship and then undersecretary) to quell warring factions in the Middle East, the Congo, and Cyprus. In light of those and other accomplishments, which included a 1950 Nobel Prize for his Middle East peacemaking role, Henry (African American Studies/Univ. of Calif., Berkeley) wonders why, close to half a century later, most Americans, including blacks, don't seem to know who Bunche was. Perhaps this was partly Bunche's own fault. Reserved and even staid, he was unaccustomed to calling attention to himself as either a diplomat or an academic. In fact, his first government job was with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, where it's assumed that reticence is golden - and instrumental. But Henry wants instead to cast Bunche as a controversial and charismatic figure, cut to fit the mold of a W.E.B. DuBois. His explorations in search of this Bunche lead to digressions that would have the reader believe his book is an excursion into black intellectual history, with Bunche as an incidental stop along the way. A basic statement of Bunche's racial views, for instance, becomes a dissertation on slavery; a movie made about him yields to a long discourse about the role of African-Americans in the movies. These digressions cloud our view of the man. (Kirkus Reviews)

<p> We need this book to remind us of the competent leadership that we enjoyed in the past. <br>

(<p> Not the least of this book's many virtues is the way in which . . . it bridges the gap between the concern's of Du Bois's day and those of the civil rights era. )-( Times Literary Supplement ), ()

Author Information

Charles Henry is Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author/editor of five books and numerous articles. He is also a former Chair of Amnesty International USA and has worked in the U.S. State Department.

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