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Officials from UCLA, the city and
community celebrated the late Ralph J. Bunche’s 100th birthday
Aug. 7 at the high school he attended.
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OUR MOST DISTINGUISHED ALUMNUS
UCLA kicks off year of tributes to Bunche
BY MEG SULLIVAN AND LETISIA MÁRQUEZ
UCLA Today
The UCLA community commemorated the centennial of the birth of one of
its most famous alumni — the late Ralph J. Bunche — with a
celebration at his other alma mater, Jefferson High School in South Los
Angeles.
The event, which took place on Bunche’s birthday, Aug. 7, brought
together students with representatives from UCLA, the city and community.
Several recipients of UCLA’s Bunche scholarships spoke in heartfelt
ways about the very tangible impact Bunche’s legacy has had on their
lives.
The L.A. ceremony and one in Washington, D.C., to mark the rollout of
a Bunche United Nations postage stamp launched a series of events to be
held throughout the year to honor the 1927 UCLA valedictorian who helped
draft the 1945 United Nations charter, brokered the 1949 armistice ending
the first Arab-Israeli War and became in 1950 the first person of African
heritage to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
“I don’t recall the last time people from so many different
parts of the university stepped forward to honor a single individual,”
said Scott Waugh, dean of the UCLA College’s Social Science Division
and coordinator of the L.A. festivities. “But, thanks to his numerous
and singular contributions to peacekeeping missions abroad and civil rights
causes at home, Bunche left a legacy that everyone should remember and
celebrate,” Waugh said.
On campus, the focal point for festivities will be UCLA’s Ralph
J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, recently named after the
political science major who served as a Daily Bruin columnist and also
reigned as a Bruin basketball star.
A commemoration is being planned for Oct. 9, at which time an honorary
holder of the Ralph J. Bunche Chair in International Studies will be named
(a permanent selection is anticipated next year), and a portrait of Bunche
by artist and UCLA donor LeRoy Neiman will be unveiled.
Other artists will pay homage to Bunche, including noted muralist Judy
Baca, art professor with the César E. Chávez Center for
Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana/o Studies, who plans to produce
a centennial poster.
The Charles E. Young Research Library, home to one of the most extensive
collections of Bunche’s papers in the world, has launched an Internet
exhibit featuring the collection at www.library.ucla.edu/bunche. A more
comprehensive version will go online later this fall, followed in January
with an exhibit at the library.
UCLA’s National Center for History in the Schools has developed
a 180-page lesson plan that follows Bunche from his Central Avenue boyhood
to his 1971 death in New York. It will be distributed to the nation’s
high schools this fall.
A Feb. 20-21 conference organized by the Bunche center will focus on
his contribution to the landmark 1944 study, “An American Dilemma:
The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,” still regarded as one of
the most comprehensive looks at American race relations.
A second conference hosted by UCLA’s African Studies Center and
Globalization Research Center-Africa will focus on Bunche’s tremendous
impact on the decolonization of Africa.
“As a citizen of the world, Dr. Bunche was ahead of his time in
understanding the connection between local phenomena like American race
relations and more global processes like economic inequality and political
disenfranchisement,” said Darnell Hunt, director of the Bunche center.
“Students of these bedeviling issues today would be well served
by familiarizing themselves with the many insights flowing from Dr. Bunche’s
legacy of scholarship, diplomacy and activism.” |
