Lonnie Bunch

Lonnie G. Bunch III
Lonnie Bunch at the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library
Born	(1952-11-18)November 18, 1952 Newark, New Jersey, United States
Nationality	American
Fields	History of the United States African American Studies
Institutions	National Museum of African American History and Culture
Alma mater	American University Howard University

Lonnie G. Bunch III (born November 18, 1952) is an American educator and historian. He has spent most of his career as a history museum curator and administrator. He is the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Bunch previously served as president and director of the Chicago History Museum (Chicago Historical Society) from 2000 to 2005 In the 1980s, he was the first curator at the California African American Museum, and then a curator at the Smithsonian's American History Museum, where in the 1990s, he rose to head curatorial affairs.

Lonnie Bunch III was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1952. He grew up in Belleville, New Jersey, where his family were the only African-Americans in their neighborhood. His grandfather, a former sharecropper, moved into the area as one of the first black dentists in the region, and Bunch's father and mother were school teachers. As a child, he experienced racism from white teenagers in his neighborhood. Bunch credits his childhood experiences with local Italian immigrants and his reading of biographies as a youth with inspiring him to study history. Bunch wanted to give a voice to those who were "anonymous" or not written about. In 2011 Bunch reflected on the early exposures: "I was in junior high and we were reading biographies of historic figures. I remember one on Gen. ‘Mad Anthony’ Wayne, and one on Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix. I thought, ‘Were there no histories of black people?’ One day, I was going through my grandfather’s trunk and I found a book about black soldiers in the First World War. I devoured it."

Bunch met Maria Marable in graduate school; they would eventually marry and she became Maria Marable-Bunch. The couple have two daughters.

He graduated from Belleville High School in 1970. Bunch attended Howard University but transferred to American University, where he earned his B.A. and M.A. in American history and African history. He earned his Phd. in history in 1979.