RALPH BUNCHE: an AMERICAN ODYSSEY Narrated by Sidney Poitier
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RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY Narrated by Sidney Poitier "I have a deep-seated bias against hate and intolerance. I have a bias against racial and religious bigotry. I have a bias against war, and a bias for peace. I have a bias that leads me to believe in the essential goodness of my fellow man, which leads me to believe that no problem of human relations is ever insoluble." — Ralph J. Bunche Nobel Laureate, 1950 A DOCUMENTARY SPECIAL FOR PUBLIC TELEVISION Major Funding Provided by: The Ford Foundation The National Endowment for the Humanities The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation The Corporation for Public Broadcasting The National Black Programming Consortium and Camille O. Cosby and William H. Cosby, Jr. Produced by WILLIAM GREAVES PRODUCTIONS, INC. RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY FACT SHEET RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY is a network television special produced by William Greaves Productions Inc. on the life and times of Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche. The two- hour documentary will be presented to public television stations nationwide by SCETV (South Carolina), one of the nation's top public television programmers. The production, narrated by Sidney Poitier, is expected to be broadcast in February 2001. After the initial telecast, the film, along with an expanded, more comprehensive 4-hour version, will be distributed on videocassette to the educational communities of America, as well as to television systems internationally. The production has been awarded major grants by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Camille O. Cosby and William H. Cosby, Jr. It has also received financial support from the National Black Programming Consortium and other public and private foundations, and is being sponsored by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Ralph Bunche (1903-1971) was the first African-American and the first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize an honor he received in 1950 in recognition of his successful mediation of the Armistice Agreements between the Arab nations and Israel. It was the first and only time in the long history of the Middle East conflict that peace agreements were signed by all of the nations involved. For almost two decades, as Undersecretary General of the United Nations, Bunche was celebrated worldwide for his contributions to humanity, particularly in the areas of peacekeeping, decolonization, human rights, and civil rights. A little known fact is that Bunche was the chief drafter of the sections of the U.N. Charter that deal with trusteeship and decolonization at the San Francisco Conference of 1945. Almost a quarter century after his death and over fifty years after the founding of the United Nations, mention of the remarkable life and legacy of this outstanding American has been virtually absent from the print and electronic media of America. RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY will seek to correct this glaring oversight. William Greaves is producing, writing and directing both productions. The Emmy award- winning independent filmmaker is known nationally and internationally for his award-winning documentaries on the African-American experience. Chief Advisor on the project is Sir Brian Urquhart, Bunche's closest colleague and his successor as Under Secretary-General of the U.N. Urquhart's recent biography Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey. (W.W. Norton, 1993) is the primary resource for the project. For more information, contact Louise Arthur at: WILLIAM GREAVES PRODUCTIONS, INC. 230 West 55th Street, New York, NY 10019 Tel: (212)265-6150 Fax: (212)315-0027 RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY INTERVIEW LIST NNAMDIAZIKIWE First President of Nigeria, student of Ralph Bunche at Howard University during the 1930's. AMIRI BARAKA Poet, writer, political activist and commentator. VINCENT J. BROWN Former Head of the Political Science Department, Howard University; student of Ralph Bunche at Howard University in the 1930's. JUDGE WILLIAM BRYANT Former student of Ralph Bunche at Howard University. JOAN BUNCHE Oldest child of Ralph Bunche, formerly with the United Nations. RALPH BUNCHE, JR, Only son of Ralph Bunche, now living in England. HERSCHELLE CHALLENOR Former executive of UNESCO, first African-American woman to head a major UN program. KENNETH B. CLARK Noted social scientist and Professor of Psychology Emeritus at CUNY; student of Ralph Bunche at Howard University during the 1930's. JOHN HENRTK CLARKE Former Professor of Black Studies, Hunter College. JOHN A. DAVIS Professor of Political Science, City University of New York; former teaching colleague of Ralph Bunche. TODD DUNCAN Broadway musical and concert star, Howard University teaching colleague and friend of Ralph Bunche. ABBA EBAN Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States ROBERT EDGAR Professor of African Studies, Howard University. WALTER EYTAN Former Israeli Foreign Minister, Chief Israeli Negotiator at the 1949 Arab-Israeli Armistice talks in Rhodes. LAWRENCE FINKELSTEIN Professor, Political Science, Northern Illinois University; former colleague of Bunche in the US State Department. JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN Noted Professor of History at Duke University. ERNEST GROSS Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. ROBERT HARRIS Professor of History, Cornell University. CHARLES HENRY Professor of African-American Studies, UC Berkeley, former President of the American Chapter of Amnesty International; author of Ralph Bunche: Model Negro or American Other and editor of Ralph J. Bunche:Selected Speeches and Writings. ROBERT HILL Professor of Black Studies, University of California at Los Angeles. JONATHAN HOLLOWAY Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Yale University; his doctoral dissertation on black intellectuals in the New Deal Era is soon to be published. DR. ABDEEN JABARA Lawyer and advocate for Palestinian rights. JOHN H. JOHNSON Chairman, Johnson Publications, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines. THOMAS KANZA Congolese Ambassador to the U.N. and Chief Advisor to Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. BEN KEPPEL Historian, University of Oklahoma. Author of The Work of Democracy. DAVID LEVERING LEWIS Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Professor of History at Rutgers University. F.T. LIU Former Assistant Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs. Assistant to Ralph Bunche during the Congo Crisis. WILLIAM MASHLER Former Assistant Secretary General of the U.N. and Assistant to Ralph Bunche. DONALD MC HENRY Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. M.T. MEHDI President, Arab-American Relations Committee. W. OFUATEY-KODJOE Professor of Political Science at City University of New York. BENJAMIN RIVLIN Professor Emeritus at City University of New York, Director of Ralph Bunche Institute of the U.N., CUNY; former assistant to Ralph Bunche at the OSS and U.N. colleague. ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR. Noted historian, Professor of History Emeritus City University of New York; former colleague of Bunche at OSS. EDWIN SMITH Professor of International Studies, University of Southern California. HAROLD STASSEN Former Governor of Minnesota, member of the U.S. delegation to the 1945 San Francisco Conference. JANE JOHNSON TAYLOR First cousin of Ralph Bunche, custodian of the Johnson-Bunche family archives. SHI BRIAN URQUHART Former chief assistant to Ralph Bunche at the UN and his successor as Under Secretary-General of the U.N. (1971-1986). Author of Ralph Bunche: An American Life (NY: Norton, 1993). Chief Advisor on Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey. RONALD WALTERS Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland; Former Head of the Political Science Department, Howard University. ROBERT WEAVER Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Cabinet of President Lyndon Johnson; friend of Ralph Bunche since Harvard graduate school days. DOXEY WILKERSON Sociologist, former Howard University colleague of Ralph Bunche. WILLIAM GREAVES WILLIAM GREAVES is executive producer/director and writer of RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY, a 2-hour PBS television special narrated by Sidney Poitier. Greaves left an acting career as a featured actor on Broadway, in television, and in films, to work behind the camera on the production staff of The National Film Board of Canada. Since his return to America, as an independent filmmaker, he has earned more than seventy international film festival awards, an Emmy, and four Emmy nominations. In 1980 he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and was the recipient of a special "homage" at the first Black American Independent Film Festival in Paris that same year. Greaves is also the recipient of an "Indy," the Special Life Achievement Award of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, a nationwide organization. Greaves has produced more than 200 documentary films, and for two years was executive producer and co-host of the ground-breaking public affairs network television series BLACK JOURNAL, for which he won an Emmy. His documentary films have been narrated and hosted by such well-known actors and performers as Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, Bob Hope, Anthony Quinn, Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, Gil Noble, Al Freeman Jr., Ricardo Montalban, Ossie Davis, Rita Moreno, Brock Peters and Marie Osmond. Most recently, William Greaves produced, directed and wrote IDA B. WELLS: A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, featuring Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, for the PBS television series THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. The film has received more than 20 film festival awards.