The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2020 57 The first Black Nobel laureate made unique contributions to the establishment of the United Nations long before the peacekeeping achievements for which he is better known. BY JAMES DANDR I DGE A retired Senior Foreign Service officer and U.S. Army pioneer special operations officer, James T.L. Dandridge II is vice chairman of the board of directors of the Diplomacy Center Foundation for the establishment of the National Museum of American Diplomacy. Now vice president of the DACOR board of governors and trustees, he served as chair of the board of directors for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training from 2005 to 2015. He is also the 2008 recipient of The Director General’s Cup for the Foreign Service for his promotion of the Foreign Service, both as a U.S. diplomat and in retirement. He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service with the rank of Minister Counselor in July 1997. “R alph Bunche was too busy making history to record it,” Foreign Service Officer Lawrence “Larry” Finkelstein, who worked closely with Bunche at the State Department and the United Nations, once stated. Bunche successfully completed negotiations of the first peace treaty between Israel and its four Arab neighbors, the Rhodes Treaty Negotiations, in 1949. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this momentous achievement in 1950, the first Black laureate, and had a long and distinguished career as a United Nations diplomat. Less known are Bunche’s enormous contributions prior to attaining world renown, contributions that were critical to the founding of the United Nations. Fortunately, Bunche’s attention to detail and his excellent drafting skills, as recovered and pub- lished by his close associates, make it possible to capture these contributions. One of the major challenges of the post–World War I and post–World War II eras was colonialism—namely, the status of territories fought over in both wars. Bunche grappled with COVER STORY THE U.N. AT 75 Ralph J. Bunche, U.N. Architect Ralph J. Bunche in 1950 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work as acting United Nations mediator in Palestine. UNITEDNATIONS