Volume 41, Number 15 · September 22, 1994
A Hero of Diplomacy
By Scott MacLeod
Ralph Bunche: An American Life
by Brian Urquhart
Norton, 496 pp., $27.00
In one of the early adventures of his remarkable but little-remembered life, Ralph Bunche collaborated with the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal on An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. He quickly discovered that Myrdal could be a perilous colleague. Bunche was already an accomplished social scientist. At Harvard he had written his prize-winning doctoral thesis on French colonialism in West Africa and was a professor at Howard University, the 'black Athens' where he organized the political science department. Myrdal's study, commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation, was the most comprehensive examination of American race relations ever attempted, and Bunche believed its findings would assist the struggle of African Americans for equality and justice.
Review, 4596 words
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