Born: August 7, 1904, Detroit, MI

Education: UCLA, B.A. summa cum laude, 1927; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1934

Died: December 9, 1971, New York, NY

The first black recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (1950), Bunche was a renowned scholar and diplomat. In one interview, he said that his grandmother inspired him to be race proud and pursue education. He earned academic honors at UCLA and Harvard, writing his doctoral thesis on colonialism in Africa. He excelled as a professor at Howard University, where he organized the Department of Political Science, cofounded the National Negro Congress, and, from 1939, assisted the Carnegie-Myrdal Study of the Negro in America.

World War II catapulted him into diplomacy. From the Office of Military Intelligence, he was assigned to the Department of State and monitored African affairs. Joining the United Nations (UN) staff in 1946, he negotiated an Arab-Israeli truce (1949) and won international renown. Appointed undersecretary (1955), he managed UN peacekeeping forces and operations in the world's most dangerous regions during the Cold War. Bunche also attended to civic commitments. President of the American Political Science Association (1953) and a pillar of the NAACP Board of Directors, he helped shape legal strategy for the Brown decision and joined Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights.