The
Nobel Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given for intellectual
achievement in the world. In the will he drafted in 1895, Alfred Bernhard Nobel
instructed that most of his fortune be set aside as a fund for the awarding of
five annual prizes “to those who, during the preceding year, shall have
conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” These prizes as established by his
will are the Nobel Prize for Physics, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, the Nobel
Prize for Physiology or Medicine, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Nobel
Prize for Peace. The first distribution of the prizes took place on December
10, 1901, the fifth anniversary of Nobel's death.
In total, there have been 16 Black Nobel Prize winners; 12 of them being Peace prize recipients. Martin Luther King Jr. (1964), Nelson Mandela (1993), and Barack Obama (2009), are some of the most well- known of all the prestigious recipients.
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| Martin Luther King, Jr; Barack Obama; Nelson Mandela |
You might also be familiar with other
winners i.e. Egypt’s former President Anwar al-Sadat, Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, and seventh Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Atta Annan. Listed below are
other Nobel Peace Prize winners you may not know.
Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political
scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late
1940s mediation in Palestine. He was the first person of color to be so honored in the history of the Prize. He was the grandson of a slave and graduated summa cum laude in 1927 from UCLA as valedictorian of his class. In 1934 he became the first African American to earn a doctorate in political science from Harvard.
Bunche’s
legendary work caught the attention of then-President Harry Truman, who wanted
the mediator to join his cabinet as the assistant Secretary of State. Bunche
reportedly turned the job down, because he realized his family would endure
racism and segregation despite his weighty job title.
Albert Luthuli was a South African teacher and
politician. Luthuli was elected president of the African National Congress
(ANC), at the time an umbrella organization that led opposition to the white
minority government in South Africa. He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize
for his role in the non-violent struggle against apartheid. He was the first
African, and the first person from outside Europe and the Americas, to be
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Wangari
Muta Mary Jo Maathai was a Kenyan
environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at
Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the
University of Nairobi in Kenya. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt
Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the
planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. In 1986, she
was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004, she became the first
African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to
sustainable development, democracy and peace.” Maathai was an elected member of
Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural
Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and
November 2005. In September 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.
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| Ellen Sirleaf; Tawakel Karman; Leymah Gbowee |
The 2011
Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three women from African and Arab
countries, for their roles as activists.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d’état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions. She placed a very distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. Sirleaf is the first and currently the only elected female head of state in Africa.
Tawakel Karman is a Yemeni politician who is a senior member of Al-Islah and a human rights activist who heads the group Women Journalists Without Chains that she created in 2005. She, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.
Leymah
Roberta Gbowee is an African peace activist responsible for organising a peace
movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led
to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation
with a female president.She, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkul
Karman, were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize “for their non-violent struggle
for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in
peace-building work”.
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