[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 170 (Friday, November 21, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15399-S15400]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       A TRIBUTE TO RALPH BUNCHE

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, it is difficult to know exactly how to 
pay tribute to Ralph J. Bunche for his extraordinary contributions to 
scholarship, diplomacy, civil rights, social justice and international 
cooperation and development. The Senate has approved H. Con. Res 71, 
``Recognizing the importance of Ralph Bunche as one of the great 
leaders of the United States  . . . The year-long centennial 
commemoration of his birth, which is now well underway, involves many 
more professional societies, educational institutions and public-policy 
organizations than it is possible to list; among them are the American 
Political Science Association, the Association of Black American 
Ambassadors, the American Library Association, the Council on Foreign 
Relations, Facing History and Ourselves, national foundation, the 
NAACP, the National Urban League, the New York Public Library, numerous 
United Nations Associations and dozens of colleges and universities in 
this country and abroad. At UCLA, Ralph Bunche's alma mater, the 
African American Studies center has been renamed in his honor. I am 
especially pleased to note that the American Academy of Diplomacy has 
chosen to honor Ralph Bunche by sponsoring the two-year Philip Merrill 
Fellowship for the two-year M.A. program at the Paul H. Nitze School of 
Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University.
  Among his many accomplishments, Ralph Bunche received the first 
doctoral degree in government and international relations ever awarded 
by Harvard University, thereby earning the title ``Dr. Bunche.'' But 
Benjamin Rivlin, who is Co-Chair of the Ralph Bunche Centenary 
Committee, has told us that he was specifically instructed to ``cut out 
this doctor business'' when as a young soldier he was assigned to work 
for Ralph Bunche in the OSS sixty years ago.
  The vast array of tributes now being paid to Ralph Bunche reflects 
just how extraordinary a person he was. Born in Detroit and orphaned at 
eleven, he went to live with his grandmother, Lucy Johnson, in what is 
today the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.
  By all accounts, Lucy Johnson was as extraordinary as her illustrious 
grandson. Writing in the Reader's Digest many years after her death, 
Dr. Bunche called her ``My Most Unforgettable Character . . . Caucasian 
`on the outside' and `all black fervor inside.' '' One of his teachers 
said of her, ``I have never forgotten the emanation of power from that 
tiny figure.'' Ms. Johnson's remark to the principal of Jefferson High 
School, where Dr. Johnson was valedictorian of his class and a varsity 
athlete, is especially memorable. In a disastrously misguided effort at 
flattery, the principal is reported to have said, ``We never thought of 
Ralph as a Negro,'' to which Ms. Johnson replied: ``Why haven't you 
thought of him as a Negro? He is a Negro and he is proud of it. So am 
I.''
  From his grandmother Ralph Bunche learned the fundamental lessons of 
self-respect and respect for others. He also took from her a passion 
for education. It was she who insisted that he go to UCLA, where he 
majored in international relations and was valedictorian of the Class 
of 1927. Upon his graduation from UCLA, Bunche received a fellowship 
for graduate study in political science at Harvard. Shortly after 
enrolling he received what was to be his grandmother's last letter. 
Writing just a week before her death, she asked, ``Will you finish at 
Harvard this year?''
  Ralph Bunche did indeed receive his Master's degree at the end of 
that year, but he did much more. In the small African American 
community at Harvard at that time he made lifelong friendships with, 
among others, the future Judge William Hastie and the future cabinet 
member Robert Weaver. He completed his Ph.D. in 1934, receiving the 
government department's annual award for the best dissertation. And 
while working toward his degree he also taught at Howard University-- 
America's ``black Athens'' --where he helped organize the political 
science department at a time when, according to Kenneth Clark, the 
distinguished psychologist who was a student at the time, ``the seeds 
of a legal and constitutional attack on racial segregation were being 
sown in the intellectual soil of Howard University.''
  Although bent on an academic career, Ralph Bunche postponed research 
in South Africa to work closely with Gunnar Myrdal on Myrdal's historic 
and highly influential study of race in this country, ``An American 
Dilemma.'' With the outbreak of World War II he was brought into the 
newly-established OSS for his expertise on Africa, and in 1944 he moved 
on to the State Department. The following year he served as an advisor 
to the American delegation at the San Francisco Conference, where the 
Charter establishing the United Nations was signed, and in 1946 he 
joined the U.N. Secretariat, where he remained until shortly before his 
death. As Brian Urquhart, who first went to work for Ralph Bunche in 
the U.N. Secretariat in 1954, later observed, ``Public service had

[[Page S15400]]

called him, and he responded with all of his ability and strength.''
  Ralph Bunche went on to become the U.N. Undersecretary-General, but 
he is probably best remembered as the recipient of the 1950 Nobel Peace 
Prize, which he was awarded for negotiating the armistice that ended 
military hostilities between the new State of Israel and its enemies. 
He was not only the first African American to receive the prize, he was 
also the first person of color; as an American, he joined the 
distinguished community of U.S. laureates that included Presidents 
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Jane Adams and Nicholas Murray 
Butler.
  In his own view, however, the Nobel Prize was not at all his most 
significant accomplishment, and his initial reaction upon being 
informed of the award was to decline it: ``Peacemaking at the U.N. was 
not done for prizes,'' he explained. He agreed to accept only when the 
argument was put to him that it would be good for the United Nations. 
Rather, Ralph Bunche gave a quarter-century of dedicated service to the 
United Nations, working day in and day out to build and secure 
harmonious relations among free and prosperous nations.
  Ralph Bunche touched the life of everyone who knew him. He is 
remembered as ``brilliant,'' with ``an uncanny ability to produce 
stupendous amounts of work over long sustained periods of 
application;'' as someone who ``play(ed) to win, but always played 
fair;'' as ``a man of extraordinary kindness and compassion (who) never 
turned his back on those in trouble;'' as a person. Kenneth Clark has 
paid him an eloquent and enduring tribute as ``above all the model of a 
human being who by his total personality demonstrated that disciplined 
human intelligence and courage were most effective instruments in the 
struggle for social justice.''

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