This month in Harvard history

April 5, 1931 – Easter Sunday. The Russian bells of Lowell House ring out for the first time in Cambridge.

April 10, 1950 – Ralph J. Bunche – AM ’28, PhD ’34, Director of the United Nations Trusteeship Department, and future winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize – is appointed to a government professorship. He is the first black named to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Bunche expects to do teaching and research in international relations, international law, and colonial administration. But U.N. duties prevent him from teaching a single class. He resigns in 1952.

April 6-7, 1951 – The Law School holds an Institute for Practicing Lawyers focusing on legal problems of mobilizing for the Korean conflict.

April 4, 1955 – A Harvard tradition undergoes an electrifying change with the installation of an automatic bell-ringer in the Memorial Church.

April 23, 1955 – The Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society perform Bach’s B-minor Mass with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch. The concert marks the 100th collaboration of the BSO, the Glee Club, and the Choral Society. In a quiet postconcert ceremony, Munch receives the second Harvard Glee Club Medal for “outstanding contributions in the field of choral music.”

– From the Harvard Historical Calendar, a database compiled by Marvin Hightower