Book Description
A superb narrative biography of the international diplomatand racial pioneer-published to coincide with a major four-part PBSseries based on this book. Ralph Bunche was instrumental-sometimes atgreat personal risk-in finding peaceful solutions to incendiary conflictsaround the world, while at the same time he was never far from therealities of racial prejudice. Bunche rose from modest circumstances tobecome the foremost international mediator and peacekeeper of his time,winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize and key drafter of the UnitedNations charter. Drawing on Bunche's personal papers and on his manyyears as Bunche's colleague at the UN, Brian Urquhart's elegant biographydelineates a man with a zest for life as well as unsurpassed integrity ofpurpose. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

United Nations
This book was a good and interesting read.I would recommend it.Ralph Bunch was a very interesting character.I am sad to say that I did not even know who he was a year ago.It further displays my mis-education.He is never mentioned in Black America.It seems if we forgot he ever existed.

It is funny that during Black history month they bring out the same old tired people.Ralph was incredibly significant to the development of the United Nations.I recommend this book.
... Read more

Book Description

Thirty years after the greatest legislative triumphs of the civil rights movement, overcoming racism remains what Martin Luther King, Jr., once called America's unfinished "work of democracy." Why this remains true is the subject of Ben Keppel's The Work of Democracy. By carefully tracing the public lives of Ralph Bunche, Kenneth B. Clark, and Lorraine Hansberry, Keppel illuminates how the mainstream media selectively appropriated the most challenging themes, ideas, and goals of the struggle for racial equality so that difficult questions about the relationship between racism and American democracy could be softened, if not entirely evaded.

Keppel traces the circumstances and cultural politics that transformed each individual into a participant-symbol of the postwar struggle for equality. Here we see how United Nations ambassador Ralph Bunche, the first African American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, came to symbolize the American Dream while Bunche's opposition to McCarthyism was ignored. The emergence of psychologist and educator Kenneth B. Clark marked the ascendancy of the child and the public school as the leading symbols of the civil rights movement. Yet Keppel details how Clark's blueprint for "community action" was thwarted by machine politics. Finally, the author chronicles the process by which the "American Negro" became an "African American" by considering the career of playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Keppel reveals how both the journalistic and the academic establishment rewrote the theme of her prize-winning play A Raisin in the Sun to conform to certain well-worn cultural conventions and the steps Hansberry took to reclaim the message of her classic.

The Work of Democracy uses biography in innovative ways to reflect on how certain underlying cultural assumptions and values of American culture simultaneously advanced and undermined the postwar struggle for racial equality.

Book Description

"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 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

"We need this book to remind us of the competent leadership that we enjoyed in the past."
—Black Issues Book Review

"This work is a welcome addition to African American studies as well as to social and cultural history..."
—Choice

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.

Customer Reviews (1)

Interesting and valuable
The fact that Ralph Bunche is little known on university campuses nowadays just proves that white male patriarchal systems of 'scholarship' are making it almost impossible to learn about all the great African American figuresin the twentieth century. Why are we not told about him? Because we aresupposed to care about conservative white males like Churchill and TeddyRoosevelt! As a feminist and a white woman, I side completely with AfricanAmericans as they try to access their glorious past, including celebratedpeople like Ralph Bunche, who, until now, was hardly known outside thepostage stamp that featured his portrait. Not any more! ... Read more

Book Description
Includes bibliographical references and index. A biography of Ralph Bunche, the African-American who won the Nobel peace prize in 1950. Text and photographs depict the tireless fighter for peace and human dignity who rose from modest circumstances to become the foremost mediator and peacekeeper of his time. ... Read more

Book Description

"Given Bunche's eventual rise to prominence as a black leader, and the criticism his integrationist politics engendered from black nationalists, it is particularly revealing to read this early work."—Booklist

"A timely and penetrating appreciation of Ralph Bunche's benchmark study of the African American leadership class in the early decades of the last century."
—David Levering Lewis, Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History, NYU

"Jonathan Holloway has performed a wonderful service in editing and introducing Bunche's A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership. For scholars and teachers in the field it has long been a source of frustration that this material has not been available. Bunche's insights and interpretations provide an important perspective on a key moment in the shaping of modern black American politics, and Holloway's introduction very usefully situates Bunche and his analysis in the context of the time."
—Adolph Reed, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line

"Ralph Bunche's stature as one of the key African American intellectuals of the twentieth-century continues to grow. Jonathan Holloway has done a great service by bringing Bunche's unpublished work on leadership to light. Skillfully guiding the reader, Holloway's introduction and editorial notes provide a perfect balance of information and interpretation, adding much to our understanding of this important and yet often neglected figure."
—Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy
"This work is a welcome addition to African American studies as well as to social and cultural history."
—CHOICE"Provides key insight into Black leadership at the dawn of the modern Civil Rights Movement, and forces a reconsideration of Bunche's legacy as a reformer and the historical meaning of his early involvement in the Civil Rights Movement."—Ebony

A world-renowned scholar and statesman, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche (1903-1971) began his career as an educator and a political scientist, and later joined the United Nations, serving as Undersecretary General for seventeen of his twenty-five years with that body. This African American mediator was the first person of color anywhere in the world to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In the mid-1930s, Bunche played a key role in organizing the National Negro Congress, a popular front-styled group dedicated to progressive politics and labor and civil rights reform.

A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership provides key insight into black leadership at the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Originally prepared for the Carnegie Foundation study, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Bunche's research on the topic was completed in 1940. This never-before-published work now includes an extended scholarly introduction as well as contextual comments throughout by Jonathan Scott Holloway.

Despite the fact that Malcolm X called Bunche a "black man who didn't know his history," Bunche never wavered from his faith that integrationist politics paved the way for racial progress. This new volume forces a reconsideration of Bunche's legacy as a reformer and the historical meaning of his early involvement in the civil rights movement.

Book Description
In this book, Jonathan Holloway explores the early lives and careers of economist Abram Harris Jr., sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, and political scientist Ralph Bunche--three black scholars who taught at Howard University during the New Deal and, together, formed the leading edge of American social science radicalism.

Harris, Frazier, and Bunche represented the vanguard of the young black radical intellectual-activists who dared to criticize the NAACP for its cautious civil rights agenda and saw in the turmoil of the Great Depression an opportunity to advocate class-based solutions to what were commonly considered racial problems. Despite the broader approach they called for, both their advocates and their detractors had difficulty seeing them as anything but "black intellectuals" speaking on "black issues."

A social and intellectual history of the trio, of Howard University, and of black Washington, Confronting the Veil investigates the effects of racialized thinking on Harris, Frazier, Bunche, and others who wanted to think "beyond race"--who envisioned a workers' movement that would eliminate racial divisiveness and who used social science to demonstrate the ways in which race is constructed by social phenomena. Ultimately, the book sheds new light on how people have used race to constrain the possibilities of radical politics and social science thinking. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Cineaste, published by Cineaste Publishers, Inc. on March 22, 2001. The length of the article is 2849 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Ralph Bunche Reconsidered: An Interview with William Greaves.(Interview)
Author: Freda Warren
Publication: Cineaste (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2001
Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Volume: 26Issue: 2Page: 35

Article Type: Interview

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