In his opening remarks, Ambassador McHenry noted that, while there are those who say that Bunche’s greatest contribution was in peacekeeping, he believes it was in the area of decolonization. “The [U.N.] charter was a compromise when it came to decolonization. The British, French and colonial powers had no intention in 1945 of granting independence to those countries under their control. … The compromise was to separate the so-called trusteeship system [which Bunche was very instrumental in writing] from the so-called non-self-governing system. The former would be more progressive, [with] considerable international oversight, and the goals would be self-government or independence. … In the non-self-governing territories section [of the U.N. Charter] those provisions do not exist.”
The goal is to promote self-government not independence. Mr. McHenry continued: “Even though there was a compromise of the trusteeship system, the precedents set in the trusteeship system would soon lead to the same kinds of changes and oversight for most of the colonies [under the non-self-governing system]. … And when I think of Bunche, it is this pioneering work in terms of the oversight of the international community for those persons who were not yet governing themselves that I think history will say he had his greatest impact.”
Mr. Urquhart, the first panelist, noted: “Bunche was a very unusual public figure. He liked getting things done, but deeply despised and disliked taking credit for them. So the efforts that he pioneered are still well known to us—civil rights, peacekeeping, decolonization—while he has virtually disappeared, which is exactly what he wanted.”
Mr. Urquhart continued: “Bunche was an intellectual in action. He started as a distinguished academic—he graduated with honors from UCLA, earned his Ph.D. from Harvard and [established] the Political Science Department at Howard University [in 1928]—and turned his brilliant intellect more and more toward problems he felt needed solving: First, civil rights and race relations in this country. Bunche not only wrote about every aspect of the civil rights question in the U.S., but was also an activist organizing demonstrations here in Washington, D.C.
“Next, decolonization, which he regarded as another branch of the same problem. Bunche became convinced early on that the race problem in the U.S. was really part of a worldwide problem … imperialism and colonialism. And he was the first person to prove this parallel in A World View of Race [1936]. And finally to the United Nations, the way it was organized and the way it tried to keep the peace.”
Mr. Urquhart called Bunche a “miraculous negotiator.” He said, “Bunche established a remarkable partnership with [Count Folke] Bernadotte, the U.N. mediator for Palestine, and when Bernadotte was assassinated, Bunche became the principal negotiator at Rhodes. … No one believed that you could complete a written agreement—an armistice, between the five Arab League states and Israel, and Bunche did it.”
Mr. Rivlin fondly recalled the influences that Bunche had on his life when he was “a young Jewish kid from Brooklyn who went to a public college—Brooklyn College—and ended up studying Moroccan Arabic at the University of Pennsylvania,” where he first met Bunche when he came to deliver a lecture. Mr. Rivlin went to work for Bunche in the Office of the Coordinator of Information (CIO), housed in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Bunche had been recruited from Howard University in 1941 to serve as senior social science analyst in the African and Far East sections of the CIO. The CIO was the precursor of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which later evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency. Bunche was chief of the African Section, Technical and Research Division, OSS, from 1942 to 1944, when he left to join the State Department and begin work on the U.N. Charter.
One of Mr. Rivlin’s most vivid memories while working for Bunche was of the day An American Dilemma (1944) was published and an office party was held to celebrate. Bunche had assisted Gunnar Myrdal on the massive and influential study on the status of black Americans, and “was very proud of his involvement with the book,” said Mr. Rivlin. “Bunche’s legacy will not only be in peacekeeping and decolonization, but also in race relations in the United Sates and elsewhere,” he noted.
Mr. Walters would like to see more research on the paradigm of African American leadership that Bunche represents; the relationship between Bunche and Martin Luther King Jr.; and Bunche’s “coming back to activism” in the 1960s. Mr. Walters, who was a member of Howard University’s Political Science Department for 24 years beginning in 1971 and served three terms as chairman, spoke of how fondly the senior professors remembered Bunche and the pioneering work he did at Howard, and joked about how intimidated he felt with Bunche’s portrait “staring him in the face everyday” as he occupied his former office.
loc.gov
Bunche's activities at the UN represented the viewpoint of the State Department, more or less...... |
