Ralph Bunche

Ralph Bunche was orphaned by the age of thirteen and raised by his grandmother in Los Angeles, where he graduated valedictorian of his high school class despite being barred from certain academic honours because of his race. He went on to earn a PhD in political science from Harvard in 1934, becoming one of the first African Americans to hold a doctorate in the field, and built an early academic career studying colonialism and race relations in Africa.

During the Second World War, Bunche joined the US State Department, where his expertise on colonial territories made him an essential architect of the postwar international order. He helped draft sections of the United Nations Charter and became one of the organisation's founding senior officials, rising to Under-Secretary-General.

In 1948, Bunche was appointed chief UN mediator in Palestine following the assassination of his predecessor. Over months of gruelling negotiation, he secured the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbouring Arab states, a diplomatic achievement that ended active fighting in the first Arab-Israeli war.

For this work, Bunche was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 — the first person of colour to receive it in the prize's history. He continued to serve the United Nations for two more decades, overseeing peacekeeping operations in the Congo, Cyprus and Kashmir, while also lending his voice to the American civil rights movement, marching alongside Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.