Book Description

A wide-ranging political biography of diplomat, Nobel prize winner, and civil rights leader Ralph Bunche. Ralph Bunche is one of the most prominent Black Americans of the twentieth century. He was not only a legendary diplomat, scholar, and civil rights leader, but also the first African American to obtain a political science Ph.D. from Harvard, and before the Second World War, he provided extensive research assistance to Gunnar Myrdal for his landmark work on race in America, An American Dilemma. He worked for the OSS--the precursor to the CIA--during the early years of the war as well as the State Department. Yet he is far better known for his diplomatic work at the United Nations, even though his many contributions and innovations have never received their full due. In The Absolutely Indispensable Man, Kal Raustiala tells the story of Bunche's dramatic life, from his early years in prewar Los Angeles to Harvard, Howard, the US State Department, and eventually the UN. As a high-ranking UN official, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his ground-breaking mediation of the first Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948-49. In the years to follow, he was a key player in many of the most important developments in the international order and did pioneering work for the UN on conflict management and the development of UN peacekeeping. But as Raustiala argues, his most enduring achievement was his work to dismantle the European empire. As a scholar and civil rights activist, Bunche perceptively saw colonialism as a central issue of the 20th century, and decolonization as a project of global racial justice. His work for the UN during the decolonization era--which stretched from the end of World War II to the 1960s--was crucially important, and Raustiala places it at the center of his account. From marching with Martin Luther King to advising presidents and prime ministers, Bunche shaped our world in lasting ways. This definitive biography gives him his due. It also reminds us that decolonization and the end of empire not only fundamentally transformed world politics, but also powerfully intersected with America's own civil rights struggle.