Husky Ralph J. Bunche, the U.S. diplomat who negotiated the Palestine armistice for U.N., went to the White House last week for a talk with Harry Truman. The President had asked him to become an Assistant Secretary of State, the highest Government post ever offered a Negro. Bunche was greatly honored, he told President Truman—but he had decided to turn it down.
To White House reporters Bunche gave two tactful reasons: he felt his U.N. job (as director of the trusteeship department) was important; he could not afford to take a salary cut from his tax-free $14,000 at U.N. to a taxable $10,000 as an Assistant Secretary of State.
But 44-year-old Ralph Bunche did not mention his most compelling reason. As an Assistant Secretary of State he would be one of the top Government officials in Washington. But as a Negro, he would be barred from most restaurants, hotels and clubs in Washington. Bunche had gotten his fill of Washington before (as a specialist in OSS and in a State Department desk job). While other officials of his rank lived in the more convenient Northwest section of the city, he built a home in the Southeast quarter. Around the corner from him was a public school, but it was for white children; Bunche had to send his two daughters to a Negro school nearly three miles away. There were other complications. Item: last March the fashionable Wardman Park Hotel refused a meeting room to the Middle East Institute when it learned that Bunche was scheduled to speak.
Before he was offered the new job, able Ralph Bunche told a friend how he felt about Washington. "Frankly," he said, "it's a Jim Crow town and I wouldn't relish exposing my family to it again."
Taking his cue from the Hoover plan for Government reorganization, President Truman last week created posts for four new Assistant Secretaries of State (one of which was offered to Bunche), giving the department eight in all, and two new posts labeled Deputy Under Secretary. Biggest switch of all was the 'appointment of George F. Kennan, top U.S. policy planner on Russian affairs, to the key post of State Department counselor, replacing Charles E. ("Chip") Bohlen, who is now No. 2 man in the Paris embassy.