"...the realm of the scholarly": Howard University
Ralph Bunche at Howard, 1932
Founded in 1867, Howard University initially served students of all nationalities, races, and classes. But with the rise of Jim Crow, by the turn of the century nearly all of its students were black. At the time Ralph Bunche was hired to establish the political science department in 1928, the university had its first black president, Mordecai W. Johnson, who was actively engaged in hiring young black faculty.
Bunche taught courses in constitutional law and was extremely popular with his students. He was considered a tough but fair grader and was almost always available to answer questions or write letters of recommendation. And his love of sports persisted: he enjoyed playing basketball and tennis with them.
Ruth Bunche, 1930s
During his first term at Howard, Bunche also met his future wife, Ruth Ethel Harris, when a colleague brought him to her house in October 1928. At the time she was teaching school and taking night classes at Howard to complete the requirements for her bachelor’s degree. After they met, she took one of his political science courses; she received a B and challenged him on the grade, but he did not change it. They married on June 23, 1930.
The Bunche family
Although Bunche had declined a fellowship in 1928 to remain at Harvard University and pursue a doctorate, in 1929 he took leave from Howard to return to Harvard. He completed his coursework and passed his general examinations, then a $400 scholarship enabled him to begin research for his dissertation. From 1931 to 1934 Bunche alternated between working on his dissertation at Harvard and teaching at Howard.
The initial topic he chose for his dissertation was the League of Nations and the suppression of slavery, but he soon switched it to a comparison of mixed-race assimilation in Brazil with segregation in the United States. However, concerned that the Rosenwald Fund, which had offered him a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, would not support his proposed research in Brazil, he decided to compare the French colonial administrations of Dahomey and Togoland.
"Light on the Dark Continent,"
1935
Bunche spent nine months in Europe and three months in West Africa conducting research during 1932-33, then returned to Cambridge, England, for three more months of work in summer 1933. His four-hundred-plus-page dissertation was accepted by his committee in February 1934 and earned the Toppan Prize for the year’s best dissertation in political science at Harvard, and he became the first black to earn a Ph.D. in political science in the United States. Although his dissertation was not published, he drew from it for an
article on French educational policy in Togoland and Dahomey, which appeared the following year in the
Journal of Negro Education. In
"Light on the Dark Continent," written for a 1935 issue of UCLA's
Southern Alumnus magazine, Bunche also translated findings from his research into a style suited for general rather than scholarly readers. His concluding sentence was harshly critical of the colonial masters: "This great continent and its sweltering population are mere sacrifical [sic] offerings on the altar of world imperialism."
While at Howard, in addition to his teaching and research, Bunche became more active on political, social, and civil rights issues. The university was a center for other young black scholar-activists, who also spoke out and took action against racism and in favor of equal rights. Bunche’s efforts on behalf of civil rights were inseparable from his private life and his career. As his grandmother and mother had taught him, he unfailingly treated other human beings with dignity and fairness and expected the same in return. When he faced instances of prejudice and unequal treatment, he responded with calm, reasoned action.
A World View of Race, 1936
In
A World View of Race, a ninety-eight-page booklet published in 1936 by the Associates in Negro Folk Education, Bunche argued that race was an social rather than a scientific construct and that conflict frequently identified as racial was in reality based on social, political, and economic causes. For the balance of the decade, he would publish regularly in journals such as the
Journal of Negro Education and the
Journal of Negro History, for which he served on the editorial board.
Selected Scholarly Articles
Bunche next proposed a project to study the impact on colonial rule and Western culture on Africans to the Social Sciences Research Council, which awarded him a two-year grant. Seeking to broaden his approach beyond the constraints of political science, he incorporated into the grant proposal training for himself in field methods of cultural anthropology. He then returned to Africa during 1937-38 to conduct further research.
Ralph Bunche (right) en route to the Congo,
1937
Upon his return to Howard in 1938, he intended to write books on South Africa and East Africa, until another project intervened. However, the
notes for a speech he gave at Morgan College in 1939 contain some of his pointed observations about relations between the races in Africa, concluding with the blunt assessment: "When the natives acquire more educ. in Western methods & a greater understanding of their latent powers, they should be able to wrench control of their country from the ruthless & greedy hands of the white exploiters. That day may not be as far distant as some imperialistic nations like to think."
