Most African Americans assuming government posts in Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal Administration" gravitated toward domestic affairs. Ralph Bunche, however, set a course for himself that would give him a major role in conducting US foreign policy.

In college, Bunche was an exceptional student who earned a bachelor's degree from UCLA and a master's and Ph.D. from Harvard.

While a professor at Howard University, he began compiling thousand of pages of notes on such topics as the political status of blacks. His emphasis, however, was on economic class rather than race.

In 1935, when Gunner Myrdal, the Swedish sociologist, was commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation to lead a comprehensive study of American race relations, Ralph Bunche was an influential member of the research team.

Bunche was recruited by the US State Department in 1944, and at the end of World War II, was a pivotal member of a team of US diplomats who helped establish the United Nations.

In 1949, he succeeded in negotiating a cease-fire in the war between the new state of Israel and its Arab neighbors. For this monumental achievement, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

At his death in 1971 at the age of 67, Bunche was under-secretary general of the United Nations.