Ralph Bunche FBI file

1940-1963

Ralph Bunche was an American political scientist, academic, and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late-1940s mediation in Israel. He was also involved in the formation and administration of the United Nations, and in 1963 he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy. Bunche served as chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University (1928-1950), as a member of the Board of Overseers of his alma mater, Harvard University (1960-1965), as a member of the board of the Institute of International Education, and as a trustee of Oberlin College, Lincoln University, and New Lincoln School.

Born in 1904 to working class parents in Detroit, Ralph Bunche graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1927 and Harvard Graduate School in 1928. Bunche taught in the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and worked with the Carnegie Corporation and the Department of State before joining the Permanent Secretariat of the United Nations in 1948. Investigations of Bunche's activities were conducted under the Hatch Act in 1940-1942 and the Loyalty Act in 1953-1954. During the 1930s and 1940s, he was associated with various organizations on the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations, among them the National Negro Congress (which he co-founded). In 1941 he was designated for custodial detention in the event of a national emergency by the FBI. He was cleared by the International Organizations Employees Loyalty Board in 1954.