Ralph Bunche and the Responsibilities of the Public Intellectual*

Holloway, Jonathan Scott

Drawing from the authoritative sources on Ralph Bunche's early years in the academy, his personal papers, and his publications from the 1930s, this essay discusses Bunche's political philosophies and how they were informed by the social realities of the world in which he and other Black scholars lived. This essay urges readers to look beyond his important international work in the second half of his career to his earlier years when he repeatedly challenged public and private orthodoxies in service of a larger ideal of a broad and universal humanity.

Ralph Bunche is remembered as one who frowned on confrontation. Internationally famous for his activities as a peace-broker for the Middle East, Bunche has gone down in history as a natural mediator-one who held his opinions closely and was skilled at political neutrality. Indeed, over the last 30 years of his life, as the modern civil rights movement emerged and then matured, an increasing number of activists thought Bunche was far too adept at avoiding political turmoil. In 1941, his colleague at Howard University, Arthur P. Davis, had only disparaging words for Bunche. Making reference to the hair coverings that allowed one to distinguish the field slaves from those in the plantation house, Davis observed, "There [are] bandana-handkerchief-headed Negroes, and silk-handkerchief-headed Negroes, but Ralph is a cellophane-handkerchief-headed Negro-you have to get off at a certain angle to see him" (Logan diary quoted in Janken, 1993, p. 207). W.E.B. DuBois chimed in as well, confiding to Howard University historian Rayford Logan that "Ralph Bunche is getting to be a white folks' 'nigger'" (p. 206). During the late 1960s, Bunche's do-good image frustrated such young Black radicals as Stokely Carmichael, who, when having Bunche's success offered as an example of civil rights progress, responded, "You can't have Bunche for lunch!" Other progressive Black leaders held similar views; Adam clayton Powell and Malcolm X dismissed Bunche as an "international Uncle Tom" (cited in Rivlin, 1990, p. 23).

Standing in stark contrast to the image of Ralph Bunche as the embodiment of the political establishment and a polished conciliator is the reality of a young intellectual who deplored capitalism on moral grounds and who openly questioned the status quo while urging others to do the same. Consider the fact that DuBois, who, by 1941, thought Bunche a "white folks' nigger," believed eight years earlier that Bunche was part of the vanguard of young, progressive Black American intellectuals.

DuBois's belief in Bunche's vanguardism grew from the fact that for the better part of the 1930s Bunche urged everyone he could-from interracial betterment organizations to graduate students at Princeton to the federal government-to address the needs of the working class before all else. He organized pickets of the Department of Justice, defended Howard University student protests at the United States Capitol, led a boycott against the segregation policy of Washington's National Theater, and helped organize the National Negro Congress (NNC; Holloway, 2002). During these years, he remained fiercely antiracialist, always trying to change the debate over the race problem in the United States into one that revolved around class. Through it all, Bunche never hesitated to criticize intellectuals and other "respectable types" who refused their moral obligations and tried to remain above the fray.

By looking back over his 1930s work, we can discern several issues about which Bunche never wavered. He did not relent in his desire to eliminate what he termed "racialism" and "racialist thought"; he remained a devout believer in the important role unfettered intellectuals and universities had to play in the modern world; and he maintained an abiding faith in the promise of American democracy. In fact, if one can find any change in his opinions on these matters, it would only be the increased intensity of his feelings. Bunche's written and spoken words articulated an agenda for the Black radical intellectual in the 1930s. A reading of his essays, key speeches, and correspondence makes evident Bunche believed that the progressive Black intellectual of the 1930s had to be politically engaged and that the "labor question" had to matter as much, if not more than the "Negro question."

Bunche emerges from this history as an independent intellectual who took advantage of opportunities for new types of scholarly inquiry and service. As such, this intellectual biography of Bunche during his early years reveals how his generation of Black intellectuals played critical transitional roles in the political, social, and racial landscapes in between the first and second World Wars. These scholars came of age during a time of dramatic societal upheaval and the work they did, aimed as it was at ameliorating social discord, marked pathways for future scholarship and intellectual activism. This generation's work led to the legitimization of social science expertise on race relations via Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma project, it broadened the scope of "accepted" intellectual discourse by Blacks, and it helped enlarge the terrain of professional possibilities for Black scholars.

NEW SCHOLARS FOR A NEW DIRECTION

Bunche received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1927 and then moved east to pursue a Ph.D. in political science at Harvard. In 1929, having just earned his master's degree, Bunche began teaching at Howard University. He organized Howard's first political science department and then served as its chair. Over the next several years Bunche worked at Howard as a professor and assistant to university president Mordecai Johnson and spent summers at Harvard pursuing his doctorate.

In 1934, after having already been promoted to associate professor at Howard, Bunche completed his dissertation, "French Administration in Togoland and Dahomey," and received his doctorate in political science. He was the first Black person to earn the doctorate in this field from Harvard, and, for that matter, in the entire country (Greene, 1946). In addition to being a "racial first," Bunche 's work also showed great promise in the eyes of his mentors. For his work, he won Harvard's annual Toppan Prize for the best dissertation in political science. But despite his committee's urging, Bunche never managed to publish his research as a monograph. He did, however, produce short essays on the topic in the 1930s and returned to Africa at the close of the decade with the intent to update his old research, gather new findings, and then write the longdelayed book (Henry, 1999; Holloway, 2002; Urquhart, 1993).

During the 1930s his early research in Africa was put to good use when Bunche took the domestic orientation of race relations in the United States and placed it in an international context. Bunche drew comparisons between the Africans' degraded political and economic state and that of Blacks in the United States. The daily contours of life in colonial Africa and the United States were undoubtedly different, but Bunche saw close connections between the systems through which both peoples found themselves at the bottom of their respective social hierarchies. In Africa, the vehicle for oppression was imperialism. In the United States, the vehicle was race. In both places the driver was capitalism.

Bunche's most complete articulation of these ideas began in early 1935 when Alain Locke, his senior colleague at Howard University, invited Bunche to "join in a series of booklets for adult education groups" (Locke & Bunche, 1935). Locke prompted Bunche to write on his area of expertise when he asked Bunche to generate an essay examining "World Aspects of the Race Problem including the Imperialistic System." Bunche accepted Locke's offer and produced a 98page pamphlet titled, "A World View of Race."

Although merely a "pamphlet" whose target audience was a population other than his professional peers, "A World View of Race" must be considered the most important publication of Bunche's early years. It is the longest piece Bunche ever published and represents the clearest nexus of his international and domestic scholarly and political interests. In this essay, Bunche examined how race was used in the modern world and offered ideas as to how the current conception of race could be changed.

Bunche argued from the start that "race" was used towards political and economic ends. Bunche noted the promise of the Western world's political principles and determined that in the light of contemporary events, these principles-"human equality and the doctrine of natural rights"-had "fallen upon hard times" (Bunche, 1936a, p. 1). Bunche held that the "inequality of peoples" was becoming an organizing theme for political and economic life across the globe, and he argued that this inequality frequently manifested itself in the form of race-based bias. Bunche remarked:

One of the rocks on which the noble philosophy of human equality has run afoul takes shape as the frightful bogey, race. No other subject can so well illustrate the insincerity of our doctrines of human equality and the great disparity between our political theory and social practice as that of race. (p. 2)

In short, Bunche saw "race" as a concept used to explain and justify a reality of economic, political, and social oppression.

Spurred on by his own ideas of economic and political causation, Bunche argued that the only solution to race problems lay in a complete restructuring of society. Toward that end, Bunche urged Blacks to develop a class consciousness and to establish alliances with White workers in a united front to attain economic and political justice. For Bunche, the only solution to the race problem would be found in the creation of a new society "in which it is unnecessary for men to knife one another for jobs, and in which economic exploitation of human beings for private gain is eliminated" (Bunche, 1936a, pp. 89-90).

In his call for a biracial movement, Bunche intended that his text would initiate the process by which such social change would evolve. He was if nothing else, a firm believer in the central role intellectuals would have to play in forging a successful biracial workers' movement. "A World View of Race," then, needs to be read as a treatise arguing for a nuanced and sociological understanding of racial formation and as a guidebook for a progressive political and intellectual intervention into undoing group inequity.

Bunche's progressive and at least theoretically race-blind ideas about social reform were either dismissed or criticized by politically moderate Black scholars and the mainstream leadership of betterment organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Fisk University social scientist Charles Johnson, for example, felt that Bunche's pamphlet was "dogmatic," and that the students for whom "A World View of Race" was intended "did not need it" (Johnson, 1938, pp. 61-62). Roy Wilkins, the relatively new editor of the NAACP's magazine Crisis, declared as early as 1933 that Bunche and his like-minded academics were so caught up in the reveries of progressive, allegedly race-neutral politics of the day that they paid insufficient attention to the practical application of their ideas. Wilkins understood the abstract appeal of an economic solution to racial problems but also had a sense of what kind of political program would inspire most Blacks. There was little doubt that race was tightly linked to economics; but in his opinion the problem was one of race and class rather than race or class. Wilkins believed there was little in the radicals' agenda that would appeal to most Blacks. "This may not be as it should be," he confessed, "but...I am afraid that if we go off too heavily on a theoretic...and economic program, we will find that we shall have cut ourselves loose from the support of the bulk of our followers" (Wilkins, 1934).

This general critique-that Bunche and his radical cohort were too distanced from the masses and too enamored of economic, sociological, and political theory-was, and continues to be, articulated often. But Bunche and his colleagues did not linger over these criticisms, responding to them defensively, justifying further their arguments. Scholars today, therefore, do not have extended treatises rationalizing their ideas and delineating how their theories could be enacted in real terms. We do not know precisely how they intended to create the biracial workers alliance they sought because they offered no strategy beyond "workers' education" to solve the abiding problem of White worker racism. When it came to such nettlesome problems, Bunche and his peers were astonishingly silent. Given the deeply entrenched quality and omnipresence of this problem, this was a critical failure in their analysis. They were, however, not silent when it came to attacking half of this problem: older Black leaders who refused to pass their reins to the next generation of leaders. These younger leaders were eager to steer Black social consciousness in a radically different, economically deterministic direction.

A CHALLENGE TO ESTABLISHMENT LEADERSHIP

Bunche's activist exhortations and opinions on race and racial leadership did not remain confined to the printed page. He was a much sought-after orator who frequently spoke in Washington, D.C., and, as he rose in prominence, across the country. During the mid-1930s, Bunche typically used these occasions to skewer self-serving leaders in the Black community. One such example can be drawn from a speech Bunche gave before the Detroit Civic Rights Committee in 1936. Bundle's critics from the 1960s would have been stunned to hear his radical attack on opportunistic Black leadership and its political quiescence.

In his speech, "Politico-Economic Analysis of the Politics of Race in the U.S." (Bunche 1936b), Bunche addressed issues that applied exclusively to Blacks' social, political, and economic position in Detroit, and more specifically, in that city's government. Despite the local flavor of much of the speech, it was clear that Bunche believed leadership styles in Detroit could be extracted and applied in different locations and on larger scales. In short, his local critique of Black leadership could move and still hold true. To emphasize this point, Bunche relocated his analysis of Black leadership to what could be found in Washington, D.C. Perhaps because the District's leadership phenomenon was what was "local" to Bunche or because what happened locally in Washington had national implications, Bundle's discussion of Black leadership styles was far more caustic and aggressive than the critique he would level at such people in "A World View of Race."

In a striking departure from the social scientific tone he typically evinced in his writing, Bunche offered his feelings about the Black leadership in Washington:

I come from the nation's capital and I awake every morning with the sickening stench of pussy-footing, sophisticated Uncle Tom, pseudo Negro leadership in my nostrils. There the race has some highly paid, so-called Negro leaders many of whom hold their positions by carrying tales about other Negroes to the "white folks"-an old plantation custom. There, Negroes...attempt to ingratiate themselves with their white superiors by labeling every Negro who demands justice for his group "red." There, I hear Negro governmental officials constantly attempt to whitewash every discrimination, every injustice to Negroes in order to secure their useless, boondoggling jobs. (Bunche, 1936b)

True to the tone of the speech, Bunche wanted to do more than offer theories or merely describe leadership "types." He named names. Bunche singled out one of the first Blacks to become involved in Franklin Roosevelt's administration, Lt. Lawrence Oxley, head of the Division of Negro Labor for the Department of Labor, as the "champion pussyfooter of all pussyfooters" (Bunche, 1936c). While Bunche used Oxley as an example of a groveling Black leader who was only interested in "buttering his own bread," his negative appraisal of Oxley had deeper roots.

Bunche was speaking to his Detroit audience just after the conclusion of a federal investigation into alleged communist activities at Howard University after a 1935 conference on Blacks and the New Deal that led to the formation of the National Negro Congress, a Popular Front-styled organization. These charges, springing from retired Howard dean Kelly Miller's (1935) sense that secularism and radicalism had combined in such way that God and American Democracy were under attack, found support among a few senators and representatives but were dismissed by the Black and White New Deal officials who attended the conference. Except for Oxley, that is. Because he claimed that the entire 1935 conference was communist, Oxley, in Bunche's opinion, distinguished himself during the investigation as the "head S.O.B. of all S.O.B.s" (Bunche, 1936c). These types of Black leaders, Bunche told his Detroit audience, had to be discredited.

But who, precisely, were these leaders? Except in those fairly rare moments when he eviscerated a particular individual like Oxley, Bunche never offered an exact definition of who literally belonged to the establishment he decried. Specificity, however, was beside the point. Bunche's rhetorical vagueness allowed him to cast a wide net in his attack against well-known Black leaders. Bunche's logic seemed to suggest that since Blacks lived in such a politically and economically degraded state that "their leaders," particularly those who appointed themselves leaders by virtue of their middle-class standing, were not doing the job.

If Blacks were to enjoy the fruits of American democracy, they had to be vigilant against self-serving leaders. With this sentiment, Bunche reflected the kind of thinking expressed by his peers who believed that they represented the best hopes for the race. He and the other "young leaders of the race" were deeply suspicious and impatient of established Black leaders who, in their collective opinion, ignored the plight of working-class Blacks. Bunche urged his listeners to join him and:

Turn the pitiless spotlight of publicity on [self-serving black leaders'] hypocrisy, dishonesty, and treachery. Shout their false names from the housetops and drive them from their soft seats. It is high time that the Negro group should win respect and dignity for its cause by its honesty, fortitude, and courage. The group never profits by what is gotten through the back-door. It is time we waved good-bye to the "hat-in-hand" age. (Bunche, 1936b)

Later in this same speech Bunche made it clear that in addition to finding a new leadership, the answer to the "Negro problem" was to adopt a new tactic that focused upon building solidarity among Black and White workers. Blacks, he warned, must never again be misled by the "snobbish, middle-class leadership that disdained the Negro masses" (Bunche, 1936b).

The intensity of Bunche's challenge to Black America's establishment leadership is at least partly explained by the frustrating social realities of racism that limited the potential breadth of leadership "types" in the Black community. For example, whereas Bunche was deeply invested in the potential for a leadership elite of intellectuals to rise up and present a class-oriented thesis of society, he had to concede that race still ruled his existence. Despite his vigorous attempts to demonstrate that solving the "race problem" would not answer this country's problems regarding Blacks and Whites, Bunche and virtually all of his colleagues at Howard and other Black institutions were trapped in a racial discourse. Academic segregation routed Bunche and his other colleagues (all of whom received their doctorates from the best, historically White research universities) to Howard, Atlanta, or Fisk Universities. Also, Bunche's audiences were typically all-Black unless he found himself talking to members of that era's radical left-an act that he would find out in the 1950s carried its own peculiar consequences when he had to defend himself against charges of affiliating with communists two decades earlier. In addition to having to lead a professional life circumscribed by race, Bunche had to live much of his private life within the same boundaries. Even when some racial barriers began to lift after World War II, Bunche declined Harry Truman's offer to serve as an assistant secretary of State because he did not want to return to Washington (he was already working in New York for the United Nations) and be forced to raise his children in its Jim Crow environment (Edgar, 1992; Rivlin, 1990).

Other ironies appear when we consider that, as much as Bunche and his young progressive colleagues decried the older Black establishment and its faulty leadership, the younger scholars were unable to reach the same audience or numbers as their predecessors. For example, the NAACP had Crisis and the National Urban League had Opportunity available as ready and capable tools to disseminate their ideas on a large scale. Additionally, the ministers and their churches, the leaders and institutions for which Bunche felt the most disdain, had the greatest access to the Black community.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

A substantial portion of Bundle's attention during the 1930s was devoted to analyzing the role of race in the world order. But the interwar era was also a period marked by many grave social concerns: global depression, the persistence of terrorist lynchings at home, and the specter of a rising fascism, to name just a few. Bunche was certainly attuned to these issues but he was particularly concerned about the security of aggrieved communities in a world teetering on the brink of conflagration. Bunche spoke frequently in support of policies that broadened the availability of democratic participation to poor Americans, he called for economic justice for all Americans, and he called attention to the ominous political developments in Europe. Although Bunche walked picket lines on a number of occasions in the 1930s, his activism was largely an intellectual activism that argued for social reform. This was not "armchair radicalism" to Bunche. Instead, Bunche believed that intellectuals and universities had an extremely important role to play in shaping the public's morality and politics.

Speaking before Carter G. Woodson's Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in 1935, Bunche informed the audience that in his view it was a "critical period for Negroes-forall" [sic] minority and oppressed groups. Our entire future is at stake in this period" (Bunche, 1935b).

Bunche began his talk with a series of specific references to the plight of Blacks in the United States:

Now [it is] more compelling on us than ever to fight-to fight to hold every inch of ground that we have won; to demand more insistently than ever before that justice be done, that equality be given, that every man have his place in the sun.

In such a period the right of freedom of thought and expression assumes double importance for the Negro race.

It is a precious right of the minority and oppressed groups to be allowed to think independently, to criticize vigorously and unceasingly not only the errors of its [sic] own leadership and philosophy but also the policies of the dominant groups and the governments which they control and which result in injustice to us. (Bunche, 1935b)

Bundle's strong reference to protecting "freedom of thought and expression" is understandable for a number of important reasons. His talk to the ASNLH came on the heels of the Congressional investigation into communist activities at Howard and if, as an intellectual, he were denied the freedom to share his ideas he had no role to play in society. This is not to suggest that Bunche advanced these arguments merely to save his literal job, but rather his figurative job. Bunche took the role and responsibilities of the scholar very seriously and spoke often on the positions of the intellectual in modern society.

Just one month after Locke had enlisted his services on "A World View of Race," for example, Bunche spoke at the Charter Day Dinner for the Howard Club of Philadelphia. After the obligatory opening remarks honoring the school and its alumni, Bunche dove into the heart of the speech: the social mission of universities. He began by stating that the "University, like all other human institutions-like the government, the church, the foundations-is incorporated in the general social fabric of any given period" (Bunche, 1936a).

For Bunche, the university captured the spirit of its age; it reflected the "mores of contemporary society"; and it played influential roles in the present and future. But in times of great social and political change, the "progressive university" had a doubly important moral role to play:

It must not merely be controlled by orthodoxy and existing attitudes, but should act as a dynamic factor for social purposes. It ought often to project itself ahead of the accepted ideology and grope for new principles which will make for a better world for all mankind. When and if it does so...it must be prepared to meet the bitter criticisms and attacks of those who are hostile to change, who vigorously, selfishly, or blindly defend the status quo. (Bunche, 1935a)

According to Bunche, the university and, by extension, the professoriate could and should take an activist role in changing society. The university, in Bunche's estimation, was a social laboratory whose role was to introduce "new ideas...[that] may hold a promise for a world vaguely conscious of certain deep-seated defects in things the way they are" (Bunche, 1935a).

In two other speeches concerning the place of higher education in the social order, Bunche reasserted that the primary role of the university was to activate the intellects of its young students so that they could be well-prepared to deal with the world outside of the academy. In the first speech, given in November 1935 to an audience at Miner Teachers College (a school for training Black educators), Bunche argued that universities must pay special attention to aggrieved and minority groups like Black Americans. These students, he maintained, had the greatest need to develop the "intelligently critical faculty to its keenest edge" in order to deal with the many social disadvantages awaiting them upon their graduation (Bunche, 1935c).

Bunche felt it "socially criminal" that students matriculated in schools, lived off a diet of textbooks and examinations, and then collided with the real world upon graduation. In his mind, professors had to prepare their charges for what their future might hold. True to the strong economic theme that guided much of his work during the era, Bunche suggested that students first had to learn something about Black workers in order to gain a "real" education. Bunche wondered:

[How] valuable to the group can the so-called "educated" young Negro be if he doesn't understand the problems of the Negro workers-if he is ignorant of the conditions of Negro workers in the tobacco fields, of longshoremen, of Negro miners, steam laundry and lumber workers? Does he know about "Jim-Crow unionism" and the significance of the relation between Negro workers and labor unions? (Bunche, 1935c)

Teachers carried a great responsibility on their shoulders and Bunche wanted to make sure that those who sought to become educators understood the gravity of their social responsibility. He concluded:

Teaching is no substitute for fulfilling the obligations incumbent upon the socially valuable, informed citizen....We need honest and courageous leadership; leadership that is socially aware of all that is happening, leadership that cannot be purchased-that has no price tag because it is too socially minded to stoop to intellectual prostitution. (Bunche, 1935c)

Six months after this speech, Bunche would revisit a number of these themes before the Detroit Civic Rights Committee when he launched into his assault of self-serving Black political leadership.

But before turning his attention in Detroit to political leaders, Bunche would speak several more times about the moral responsibilities of intellectuals and the need to protect academic freedom. Even though Howard president Mordecai Johnson vowed to protect the freedom of his faculty, the 1935 Congressional investigation made it clear that this freedom would be challenged. Just how limited his academic freedom could be was illuminated for Bunche when he was scheduled to appear before the Capitol City Forum-a liberal Washington, D.C.-based speaker's group-in November 1935. Just before the meeting was to be called to order the police arrived and stopped the proceedings. The police claimed that the Forum lacked a permit to use the building where Bunche was to speak and that the building itself was in violation of fire codes. Bunche felt otherwise, asserting that "the police action was another phase of the anti-communist campaign" ("Bundle's Talk," 1935; "Cops Break Up," 1935).

Two weeks later, Bunche finally got his opportunity to speak before the Capitol City Forum. He made his opinion plain: "[Academic freedom is] the very foundation of the educational process. It involves the right of free inquiry and discussion on the part of both students and teachers, and protects both from discipline for nonconformity" (Bunche, 1935d).

Bunche had a deep concern that raging nationalism and an ever-expanding federal government made it "unpatriotic to think," and that both were fueled by this country's economic structure. Bunche argued that American universities and their endowments were captive to corporate interests, and he feared that education supported by corporate-giving was tainted by conservative, capitalist ideology. This corporate worldview trickled down through the university hierarchy. Bunche knew all too well that despite promises of academic freedom professors still took risks when they applauded trade-union movements or supported picketers and other strike activities. Universities, he pointed out, preferred to engage in less threatening struggles: fraternity parties, football games, and alumni fund-raising. Discussing controversial subjects like "capitalism, race relations, the trade-union movement, the protection of civil liberties, the status of minorities, and the conflict of classes" was taboo and even prohibited (Bunche, 1935d).

Bunche knew of which he spoke for Howard University was especially vulnerable to the whims and vagaries of corporate and federal good-will (Holloway, 2002). Indeed, in a July 1936 article for The Journal of Negro Education, Bunche went on at length about the dangers of a close relationship between Black institutions like Howard and the capitalist system (Bunche, 1936d). The article, "Education in Black and White," presented an overview of the state of higher education in the United States, especially as it related to Blacks.

Bunche resumed the drumbeat he had begun seven months earlier at the Capitol City Forum. He spoke of the gloomy consequences that awaited lovers of democracy if academic freedom were curtailed, warning the reader about the "'nightriders' in the educational world" who wanted the scholar to be "an intellectual virgin, innocent of all knowledge of and contact with the world of practical affairs and its problems." Bunche also examined the extent to which universities reflected the "status quo...consistently harmoniz[ing] with the dominant capitalistic pattern" (Bunche, 1936d, p. 351).

Black schools' fiscal health was tenuous when compared with that of White institutions. On this issue Bundle's evidence was more than compelling. For instance, he pointed out how easy it was to trace the development of Black schools in the South to the well-being of Sears and Roebuck stock. The Rosenwald Fund, which funded a massive construction effort for primary and secondary schools for Southern Blacks, was a philanthropic arm of Sears (Anderson, 1988). Black colleges and universities were even worse off, Bunche added, referring to them as "inevitable puppets of white philanthropy" (Bunche, 1936d, p. 356). The concern Bunche felt over the looming loss of academic freedom was even more immediate when considering Black education. Because White philanthropies were the "controlling interests" at these schools there was little hope that '"Negro Education' could ever direct itself to really effective solutions for the problems of the masses of working-class Negroes" (p. 356).

Three months after "Education in Black and White" was published, Bunche traveled to Princeton University's School of Public Affairs to participate in the Conference on Higher Education for the Negro. The talk he gave, "Some Implications of the Economic Status of the American Negro for Negro Education," echoed many of the same themes he had addressed in "Education in Black and White" and at the Capitol City Forum. He spoke to the fact that schools were captive to capitalist interests and urged that education not take place in a vacuum, divorced from any interaction with the real world. What makes this presentation noteworthy is the setting in which it occurred and the tone with which Bunche concluded his presentation. While some Black student radicals of the 196Os would come to believe that Bunche was an "Uncle Tom," it is evident that he was not one yet, as he had the following to say to the young Princeton scholars:

In your reading and thinking on this prob[lem] be honest with yourself. Think straight. Be candid-brutally so, if necessary. Hate the N[egro] if you will, but hate him on honest, sound grounds.... Dislike or hate the Njegro] because of the econ[omic] threat that he offers, or because he is a worker, or a strike-breaker. But not for specious reasons-not because some race maniac implements his phobia with pseudo-scientific theories of racial inferiority, or because of his body-odor, or his steatopogy....And for Pete's sake don't love the Negro-at least never admit it publicly. The Nfegro] race has too many professional lovers-it has too many "affairs" of this kind-and most of them do him more harm than good. Don't fall for sentimental, romantic, or prayerful approaches to the problem. (Bunche, 1936e)

With the Princeton appearance, Bunche turned his attention away from academic freedom, the role of intellectuals in the public sphere, and Black education in general. Except for "A World View of Race" and several book reviews, Bunche largely disappeared from the public sphere from 1937 through the middle of 1939 as he left the country on extended research trips, became a lead researcher for Myrdal's An American Dilemma, and even consulted for a Republican Partysponsored investigation on Black voting behavior (Holloway, 2002).

A FINAL PROGRESSIVE PUSH

After Bunche completed his work for the Myrdal project and the Republican Program Committee (the latter of which was never published as Bunche and the RPC fundamentally disagreed on numerous findings in Bundle's report), he began to accept public speaking engagements again. Bunche's return to the wide-open, occasionally ad hominem, verbal assaults of the 1930s, however, was short-lived. As Hitler's armies rolled into the Soviet Union and Japanese aggression remained unchecked, the United States' preparations for war went into overdrive. An important aspect of this effort involved developing a reliable understanding of Africa-one of the war's major theaters-and its historic connections to Europe. To solve this problem, the newly created Office of the Coordinator of Information (COl-from which the Office of Strategic Services and then the Central Intelligence Agency emerged) sought Africanists to provide public information, generate propaganda, and wage psychological warfare. Upon the recommendation of Bunche's former mentors at Harvard University, representatives from the COI contacted him about such a position. In September 1941, Bunche accepted an appointment as a senior social science analyst for the Office of Strategic Services (Urquhart, 1993). The conversion to expert consultant was now complete.

Whereas Bunche had already considered himself part of the public sphere, now the level of his involvement-and in his view, responsibility-intensified. It was at this moment that Bunche decided to step back from the fiery rhetoric that characterized his speaking and writing of the previous decade (Logan, 1943; Urquhart, 1993). One could maintain that Bunche's personal views never changed, and that he would share his opinions on race and economics with his close friends. But now, and for the rest of his life, Bunche was determined to prevent these private opinions from damaging or compromising the effectiveness of any organization to which he was attached. Whatever may be the true source of this new reticence, we are left with a final irony: As Bunche became more of a public figure, he also became more of a private one.

In the summer preceding his federal appointment, however, Bunche had not yet metamorphosed into this public sphinx. In the middle of July, Bunche participated in the "Conference on the Needs of Negro Youth," a gathering sponsored by the Howard University Summer School. His talk on the opening day of the meeting, "The Role of the University in the Political Orientation of Negro Youth" (Bunche, 1940), revisited some of the themes he had addressed prior to his international travel and extensive research projects.

In Bunche's 1936 article, "Education in Black and White," he had railed against those who wanted academics to remain "intellectual virgins." In his 1940 conference speech, Bunche continued with this theme but in a more direct and aggressive manner. He chided his audience, and laid some blame on himself as well; for being "pure scholars, intellectual vestal virgins [who] are of the world but not in it. Rumor reaches us that the worldly world is sordid, vulgar, barbarous, lying, intriguing, and ruthlessly lacking in moral fabric" (Bunche, 1940). Bunche chastised those who were faint of heart and afraid to venture outside the "severely insulated cloisters of the University" (Bunche, 1940). Bunche felt that scholars prided themselves on their unending pursuit of the truth. But this pursuit, Bunche warned, allowed professors to lose touch with real-world problems and also left the professors' students dangerously unprepared for the complications and contradictions of the modern world (Bunche, 1940).

Bunche was not advocating a complete departure from the objective social science ideal to which he and his Howard colleagues had pledged allegiance earlier in their careers. Bunche still wanted professors to "cultivate scholars," but now he also believed academics had a moral responsibility to train a few "crusaders for democracy" as well. Bunche did not try to hide his purpose in all this: "Is it not clear that it is only through democracy that we can hope to continue to produce scholars? It is no secret to anyone now that the democratic principle is sorely besieged throughout the world, and is threatened with total annihilation" (Bunche, 1940). The blood threatening to wash up on shores around the world intensified in Bunche the need to develop "social crusader-scholars."

Bunche signaled that pragmatic political concerns were overwhelming the hope he and his progressive colleagues of the early 1930s carried for a different socioeconomic and a truly democratic future. "The Negro of today," Bunche declared, "is not permitted the luxury of choosing between ideal systems. He is socially blind even if he permits himself to build his hopes in such a dream world." Although his audience probably was unaware, Bunche was making inferences to his own experiences with what had been Bunche's dream world: the National Negro Congress. Just months before he gave the speech to the Howard Summer School students, Bunche had broken with the NNC. Frustrated from the start that the NNC relied too heavily on race as an organizational tool and then did not limit its organizational scope exclusively to labor, Bunche left the NNC after its April conference in 1940 (Henry, 1999). Bunche wanted his students to understand that the NNC had become, in his view, a puppet of the Communist Party. And since he thought that Stalin's communism was "sophistry of the cheapest variety," he urged his audience to dispel any notions that they may have had to support the Communist Party efforts or those of the NNC (Henry, 1999; Hutchinson, 1994). Communism, he made clear, failed as an ideal system for improving the quality of Black life.

Fascism, based as it was on the politics of White supremacy, was clearly not an option. Conceding that there were many things wrong with democracy in America, Bunche still urged those in attendance to accept that whatever progress the race had made since slavery was due to the democratic ideal. "Democracy, even imperfect democracy," he offered, "has been the ideological foundation upon which our lives have been based. It has been our spiritual life blood" (Bunche, 1940).

Bunche still believed that class and economics should supplant race as analytic or scientific tools for social analysis (Bunche, 1941). He felt that Black colleges had to trumpet the virtues of democracy more than ever before. Black schools, Bunche argued, had to do everything possible to develop in their students and in society at large an "ardent faith in the principles of democracy" and to make a "fetish of the worship of democracy" (Bunche, 1941). This was a holy mission in which all elements of the university must be engaged: "the classroom, the seminar table, the lecture platform, the university press, the chapel" (Bunche, 1940).

Bunche concluded his lecture with a nod toward an age that had passed. In his closing thoughts one can discern a hint of sadness at the opportunity that had been lost, but one can also note a close-the-ranks mentality that privileged national unity at a time of international crisis and declared that without sacrifice, all gains would be for naught. Bunche asserted that universities could afford to act as disinterested or objective institutions dedicated to scientific truth in times of peace and prosperity. In such times, he continued, it might be enough for schools to cultivate the next generation of truth-seekers. But that day had passed. Universities now had a moral obligation to defend national standards and to save democratic ideals. If they shirked that responsibility, their own existence was threatened (Bunche, 1940).

Bunche remained on the faculty at Howard until he resigned in 1950 but was essentially on leave throughout the 1940s as he moved from posts in the federal government to the United Nations. In terms of public profile and the effect his views and decisions would literally have on the world, Bunche would undoubtedly become the most prominent Black scholar of his generation. It is stunningly ironic, then, that Bunche, the great believer hi the roles the intellectual and the university had to play hi modern society, rose to the heights he did only when he removed himself from those spheres. It is also noteworthy that despite his success, Bunche remained exposed to racial slights and blatant discrimination along the way and never broke the shackles of a racial logic built by a racist society. These facts make it all the more surprising that Bunche was able to sustain his anti-racialist belief system for as long as he did.

We are left, then, with an enigma: a one-time radical who is written off as an Uncle Tom; an active supporter of progressive politics who at one point contracted his work to the increasingly conservative Republican Party; an objective social scientist whose most important intellectual contribution is captured in ad hominem speeches and pamphlets. In short, Bundle's legacies are difficult to discern. Because he kept accepting projects that pulled his attention away from manuscripts in progress, his scholarly publishing record is thin. Furthermore, because he was only active on the Howard faculty for little more than a decade, his legacy as an intellectual is limited. What is clear, however, is that in just over 10 years of sustained activity, Bunche served as a model of intellectual engagement beyond the life of the mind. Scholars, Bunche felt, had a moral responsibility to speak to social injustice and then to act on their beliefs in myriad ways to secure a better future. According to Bundle's 1930s worldview, this was a future that ought to be defined by economic justice rather than racialized systems of degradation.

* Portions of this essay were previously published in Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris, Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941. Used with permission of the University of North Carolina Press.

The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Spring 2004)

Copyright © 2004, Howard University

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. (1988). The education of blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Bunche, R. (1935a, March 2). Some observations of a faculty member on universities in general and Howard in particular. Speech for Howard Club of Philadelphia, Charter Day Dinner. Bunche Papers, Los Angeles: Department of Special Collections, Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1935b, September 9-11). French and British imperialism in West Africa. Speech for Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1935c, November 13). Education and minority group citizenship. Speech for Miner Teacher's College. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1935d, November 22). Academic freedom. Speech for Capitol City Forum. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1936a). A world view of race. Washington, DC: Associates hi Negro Folk Education.

Bunche, R. (1936b, May 24). Politico-economic analysis of the politics of race in the U.S. Detroit Civic Rights Committee. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1936c, June 15). Bunche to A. Harris. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1936d). Education in Black and White. The Journal of Negro Education, 5(3), 351-358.

Bunche, R. (1936e, October 27). Some implications. Speech for Princeton School of Public Affairs. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1940, July 15-17). The role of the university in the political orientation of Negro youth. From Report of the proceedings of the conference on the needs of Negro youth. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bunche, R. (1941, January 31). Some observations on Black and White thinking on the Negro problem. Speech for third annual conference of adult education and the Negro. Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Bundle's talk police halted, rescheduled. (1935, December 6). Washington Tribune.

Cops break up alleged red meeting. (1935, November 29). Washington Tribune.

Edgar, R. (Ed.) (1992). An African American in South Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Greene, H. (1946). Holders of doctorates among American Negroes. Boston: Meador.

Henry, C. (1999). Ralph Bunche: Model Negro or American other? New York: New York University Press.

Holloway, J. (2002). Confronting the veil: Abram Harris, Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Hutchinson, E. (1994). Blacks and reds: Race and class in conflict, 1919-1990. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Janken, K. (1993). Rayford Logan and the dilemma of the African American intellectual. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Johnson, C. (1938, June). A world view of race: Review. The Journal of Negro Education, 7(1), 61-62.

Locke, Alain to R. Bunche (1935, February 1). Bunche Papers, UCLA.

Logan, R. (1943, February 11). Logan diary. Logan Papers, Library of Congress.

Miller, L. (1935, April 16). Mail order dictatorship. New Masses, p. 95.

Rivlin, B. (1990). The legacy of Ralph Bunche. In B. Rivlin (Ed.), Ralph Bunche: The man and his times (pp. 3-27). New York: Holmes & Meier.

Urquhart, B. (1993). Ralph Bunche: An American life. New York: W. W. Norton.

Wilkins, Roy to Walter White. (1934, September 19). On the draft of the report by the committee on future plan and program. NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.

AUTHOR

JONATHAN SCOTT HOLLOWAY is Professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies at Yale University; jonathan.holloway@yale.edu. His interests include Black social and political movements and Black intellectuals in the 20th century.

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