Riordan Cuts Red Tape to Begin Restoration of Nobelist’s Home

Donning a hard hat and goggles, Mayor Richard Riordan joined a work crew Thursday in cleaning up the graffiti-marred boyhood home of Ralph J. Bunche, the first African American to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Riordan, who learned about the condition of the home from an article in Sunday’s Times, blamed the city’s slow-moving bureaucracy for holding up the funding to restore the home.

“I will not tolerate instances of bureaucratic delays one more time,” he said during a news conference at the home on East 40th Place in South Los Angeles.

The Dunbar Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit group that bought the home three years ago, plans to convert the house into a museum dedicated to Bunche’s legacy. But the restoration funding promised by the mayor’s Targeted Neighborhood Initiative has been delayed for two years.

Riordan said the delay resulted because a city agency required the Dunbar group to complete three legal processes to get the money.

“I’m cutting through the red tape to make sure that the rehabilitation of this home begins now,” he said before issuing a $25,000 check to Anthony Scott, executive director of the Dunbar group.

The remaining $75,000 will be issued next week, Riordan said.

Bunche, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for drafting the United Nations Middle East armistice in 1949, was a founding member of the United Nations and is credited with inventing shuttle diplomacy. He died in 1971 at the age of 67.

“It’s really been a disgrace for the city of Los Angeles to let his house be treated this way,” said Newton Edwards, a retired military officer who has lived across the street from the Bunche House for nearly 40 years.

Edwards has seen the house in disrepair for so long that he remains skeptical about efforts to restore it.

“I’m glad to see the work started,” he said. “I don’t know if they will go all the way, though.”