Max Yergan

by David Henry Anthony III

  Susie Yergan unlocked the doors to the new Fort Hare Christian Union Building and welcomed the delegates to enter, at which time Francis P. Miller, chairman of the World’s Student Christian Federation spoke of the gathering as one intended to express a common faith, exemplified in the symbolism of a nascent edifice but also dependent upon concrete spiritual endeavor. Other speakers were E. H. Brookes, Howard Pim, D. D. T. Jabavu, Principal Alexander Kerr, Charlotte Maxeke, Ray Phillips, A. B. Xuma, W. G. Ballinger, George E. Haynes, and R. V. Selope Thema. Jan Hofmeyr, M.P., delivered a keynote address before an integrated audience of nearly four hundred, the flower of South Africa’s youth, Black and White alike. Max considered the assemblage a demonstration of Christianity in action. Analyzing the gathering’s significance, Yergan later wrote,

  This conference was undertaken with three definite purposes in view: first to clarify for ourselves the meaning of the Christian gospel and ascertain more deeply the truth of God which is in Christ; secondly to discover more effective ways to implement in our full corporate life the fullest content of the Christian faith; and, thirdly, to bring together representative students and senior people of the European and Bantu races of Southern Africa in order that together we might face the needs and facts of our common life and together seek a way out of our difficulties.53

  White participants in the conference were not always able to transcend the limitations of time and race. Howard Pim read a paper later printed under the title “Introduction to Bantu Economics,” the central thesis of which asked whether “African economics” was not a contradiction in terms. For Pim, Africa’s collective ethos had both strengths and weaknesses. The latter could be glimpsed in what he took as “tribal” power, whose effects Pim summed up as antithetical to Western thought and practice:

  In fact then the “Science of Economics” as we Europeans understand the term is a feature and a consequence of individualism, and only to the extent that the Bantu are individualists, and this means only since they have met the European and followed his lead, have they any “Economics” at all.54

  Of relevance to Yergan is that whatever hope Pim held out for the improvement of the Bantu lay in their ability to imitate those he saw as salutary exemplars, America’s Negroes. In making this argument, Pim followed not only the lines laid out by late governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Gordon Guggisberg, but also a widely held belief among both Blacks and Whites from which Yergan benefited. For all its ethnocentric faults, Pim’s argument did lead to this point:

  I do not claim that this remarkable advance made by the American Negro proves that the South African Native is capable of bridging the gulf that in South Africa divides him from the European, but I do say that it shows quite definitely that people of Negro and Bantu race are capable of prospering under a social system that is individualistic in the extreme, and if they have done it once I see no reason why they should not do it again. There is no justification whatever for refusing them the opportunity, especially as if they fail no one can be worse off than if opportunity had been denied, while their success will redound to the prosperity of all.55

  Even if Pim seemed to be speaking above all to himself and other “Europeans” and was certainly excluding the Nonwhite audience, his comments concerning this emulative road to progress were revealing.

  A great irony of this situation was that it represented an attempt to transcend racial barriers by the Bantu Student Christian Association—the very embodiment of the South African form of racial segregation.56 Such an effort had not been undertaken by White liberals or White institutions; it was left to Black people, those lethally oppressed and toxically disadvantaged by the color bar, to create a remedy that acknowledged the cruelty with which racism victimized masters and minions alike by rendering it impossible to recognize the ways that each depended upon the other, the inextricable ties that bound them. Fort Hare Professor Edgar H. Brookes praised Yergan’s effort as follows:

  Max Yergan has done an unobtrusive but wonderful work in South Africa. He more than any other individual, conceived and planned this Conference and carried it through to success. We are grateful to America for the gift of this modest Christian gentleman, a true knight who has achieved the conquest of his own soul and is ever ready to conquer others for his Lord.57

  Here then, “Bantu” Christians demonstrated to their “European” coreligionists, with whom they could not even share full membership in one body pledging to promote Christian comity, how genuine Christianity should be practiced. With one audacious stroke, Yergan took complete advantage of this extraordinary opportunity, creating conditions for a temporary suspension of segregation in dining halls, sporting arenas, and meeting rooms. This brought Black and White students, faculty, staff, and guests closer to one another than either group had ever dared dream possible. Barely a week long, this social experiment had great ramifications, its resounding echoes reverberating past Fort Hare, Alice, and the Cape into the countryside, penetrating as far as Afrikaner Stellenbosch. Again, a Black American seeking common cause with Africans had shown the way to a revolution. As Don M’Timkulu recollected,

  Stellenbosch was there, Pochefstroom was there, and Pretoria was there, and, of course, we had the English—Anglophone—universities: Cape Town, Rhodes University, Natal, they were also there. So it was—from the point of view of anyone interested in inter-racial harmony—it was a tremendous success. But as I say, it aroused real tremendous hostility, as for the first time I should think, the Afrikaners took seriously the whole question of interracial mingling, which before, I mean, the general attitude of the Afrikaners, as far as the blacks are concerned was that “they’re nice fellows and not too troublesome”—that’s all. But now they were faced with the fact of a kind of equality between black and white for which they were absolutely unprepared. So as far as the South African angle was concerned, the conference at Fort Hare, and the fact that Max Yergan was the main organizer of that conference, sent up his reputation very high, particularly amongst the blacks.58

  The repercussions of the conference were immediate and far reaching. As soon as the meeting began, it garnered coverage in the local news media, Afrikaans as well as Anglophone. The Cape Times accorded it first-page space for three days straight. But nothing said could approach the physical facts of the case for causing controversy. Helen R. Bryan, secretary of the Committee on Race Relations for the American Friends Service Committee, who interviewed the Yergans in 1931, reconstructed the most delicate part of the scene as follows:

  After two meals at which the students had been divided according to their race, a group of European students accosted the conference leaders with the inconsistency of their methods saying they had been summoned to the conference to think together but that this purpose was decidedly retarded by the artificial division in the dining hall. The system was arranged so as to conform with the students’ suggestion.59

  Some commentators felt that a dire precedent had been set. Not surprisingly, many such opinions came from Afrikaner conservatives and fearful Anglo South Africans. Yergan’s greatest regret was that the conference was not attended by more “Dutch” speakers. To his mind they would have had the most to gain from a chance to actively experience Christian fellowship with their African peers. On the other hand, White conservatives felt that they also had the most to lose by rubbing shoulders with people they believed to be their social, racial, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual inferiors. Judging by the responses of commentators critical of the event, it was widely believed that Yergan’s gamble had been a major fiasco, several considering it a provocative but counterproductive exercise exceeding the bounds of good taste. The controversy snowballed.

  Given reportage of the event, M’Timkulu’s memory that the Afrikaner press and public proved totally unprepared for what transpired at friendly Fort Hare appears to be an understatement. In a letter to the tendentious Die Burger, a correspondent published this provocative account:

  The place is the sitting-room of a p
ublic boarding-house, not far from Worcester. The speaker, a prominent member of the staff of a European training school in the Western Province, and, as he insisted with emphasis, a member of the Head Committee of the Union Students’ Christian Association. The audience, white Afrikaner school-going boys and girls with parents and friends. After preliminary religious performances, the speaker said that he was just back from the Christian Students’ Congress at Fort Hare, and wished, Oh, so much, to tell of the wonderful development of the Kaffirs and the brotherly atmosphere of their community there. First he told them of the wonderful learning riches and high birth of the American Negro who is apparently the head of the Fort Hare Kaffir School or “College” as he called it—a gentleman, who, when he had come out from America was at his (the speaker’s) house and shook hands with his wife in a truly gentlemanly fashion, and how at that time, though some of the Europeans were at first against it, the Church Council at last gave the hall for an address by this Dr. —— to a packed audience of whites.60

  The riotous reaction to the Fort Hare fellowshipping was by no means confined to journalists’ reports. “European” students, particularly those from institutions in the Afrikaner heartland, were the recipients of all kinds of abuse. M’Timkulu recalled, “Some of the students faced some really hostile criticism when they got back to their home areas.”61 The reason for this was not difficult to determine as Afrikanerdom fought fiercely for the hearts and minds of its sons and daughters:

  Some of them [the conference attendees], particularly those that came from the Dutch Reformed Seminaries [were exposed to this because]—I might say it was even more important in South Africa because the white universities which were involved were some of the biggest and most well known universities.62

  Even the otherwise bold principal of Fort Hare, Dr. Alexander Kerr, virtually uniformly revered for fair-mindedness and probity, became positively timid facing the furor that his African-American friend and fellow missionary’s nonracist fearlessness had fueled. Forty years later he still addressed the controversial subject of integration nebulously:

  At the opening of the hall in 1930, a conference for the discussion of matters religious, social, racial and economic was attended by 300 delegates under the presidency of the Chairman of the worldwide YMCA Organization. Papers were read by authorities in the separate departments and lively discussions followed. More than local interest was taken by the Press, not so much in the subjects discussed, as in the fact that European students and guests had been accommodated in the College hostels and all meals had been served in the College dining hall without segregation of the races. In retrospect, this was an early exhibition of the climate of opinion which foreshadowed a policy that was to become much more prominent politically in later years.63

  But those within the orbit of the WSCF, SCM, YMCA, and YWCA, as well as their philanthropic and humanitarian supporters, also noted Yergan’s achievement. One of these was Thomas Jesse Jones, who gave a copy of the August 1930 South African Outlook commemorating the event to his colleague Anson Phelps Stokes, commenting, “As you will note, the Bantu-European Conference was organized by Mr. Yergan. From all accounts it has been a real achievement in the direction of inter-racial relations and the effective development of the Native People.”64

  Seeking to capitalize on the achievement of the conference’s goals, Yergan wrote Rockefeller Fund executive Thomas Appleget that the building was functioning and that the daring Bantu-European inter-racial experiment had truly proven successful. In his letter, Yergan summed up the meeting’s threefold significance. It was important, first of all, in that it occurred; secondly, in that it was a religious gathering that showed the power of Christianity in action; and thirdly, in that it was a manifestation of the possibility of finding a middle road. Appleget responded,

  Certainly the information which you send me is very encouraging. No wonder you are so enthusiastic after such a conference. You are performing a highly useful and courageous function in one of the most delicate and complicated of fields. For that reason you must not be discouraged if things do not always go as well as the meetings which you describe in your letter. Every step can not be forward, but I am certain of the inevitable progress of your march.65

  Yet in spite of the sage counsel provided by Appleget, the vituperative attitude of local White conservatives toward the Fort Hare conference deeply wounded Max. While he often evoked it in his WSCF correspondence, he proved unable for months to write at length about the gathering. It must have been painful for him to comprehend how something on which he had labored for so long, marshaling all available resources, could yet have been received so thoroughly unsympathetically. This did little to ease his troubled mind; rather, it intensified his sense of uncertainty about the value and propriety of the burden he had committed himself to share in South Africa, for people imprisoned within a state and society impervious to even the smallest, least threatening efforts to bring about change. At that very moment when he should have been able to celebrate, to take a much deserved rest, to celebrate a job well done, fate dealt him another bitter pill.

  The year 1931 brought Yergan to the United States, where he engaged in a number of lengthy discussions with his old mentor, Moor-land. Early that year he shared a YMCA panel with Ethan Theodore Colton, a Y partisan worriedly captivated by the Soviet Union, having recently published a treatise entitled The XYZ of Communism. Yergan left the States in August of that year, en route to Cape Town via London. One of the sojourners Yergan met while in London was Morehouse president Dr. John Hope, with whom he spent several days in London before permitting himself to be coaxed into accompanying Hope to France. They motored through the Bois de Boulogne, then went by rail to Versailles. President Hope would travel to Russia that winter, and this trip may have come up in conversation.66 Indeed, several of his London days were passed conversing with people who either had traveled to or were considering visiting the Soviet Union. Yergan became so enthusiastic about what they had to say that he spent three weeks seeking a visa so that he, too, might savor the great Soviet achievement. However, her was foiled by interminable delays. At this time, his thoughts turned to the pressing need for a thorough, fundamental transformation of the prevailing social and economic order. In a frank letter to Moorland, Yergan bared his soul:

  I have never been so aware of theories. My days in England during the time of the political and financial crisis there, and even my limited understanding of the absence of any plan or courageous programme for dealing with these problems as they touch practically every country in the world all lead me to believe that it is a revolution we require in order that a large part of the past may be blotted out forever and a new chance given to man to try again for a life better than the one we live today. That is really my belief and state of mind just now; and coming back to Africa has only confirmed it.67

  Hope’s invitation to Yergan to meet him in Paris extended to attending the large French Colonial Exposition then underway there, an exhibit that received much international attention and acclaim. However, the show struck Yergan as anything but positive. As he later frankly informed Moorland,

  I was greatly disappointed with it. It revealed to me the subtle and callous nature of French colonial policy. While pretending to make French subjects of their colonial population, and lift them to the advantages of French civilization, this exhibition made it quite clear that the French like all European colonial powers are interested in one thing only—the exploitation of the country and the people whom they profess to desire to civilize. The French are just now carrying on an energetic campaign to unite all of the colonizing powers against what they call “the communist terror”; this is aimed really at fastening further shackles upon millions in Africa and elsewhere.68

  Central to solidifying this inchoate yearning for revolution was Yergan’s friendship with the performing artist and political activist Paul Robeson and with Robeson’s spouse, the writer and former chemist Eslanda Cardozo Goode. Unable to se
cure satisfying outlets for their multidimensional talents in the United States, the Robesons, like so many other African-American artists and intellectuals, sought more fertile fields on foreign shores. For Paul Robeson this included not just the unique charm of aesthetic endeavor and a broader range and number of employment opportunities but also the ideological stimulation provided by the presence of a lively corps of tough-minded, anticolonial, and antifascist intellectuals and trade unionists in London, many of whom were of African and Caribbean extraction. Essie Robeson, who studied anthropology under Bronislaw Malinowski and sociology under Raymond Firth at the London School of Economics, wrote several valuable books treating this vibrant era.

  Robeson and Yergan would have had lots to converse about in 1931. They traveled in concentric circles. Both had been subjects of chapters in two pioneering studies of African-American achievement published in 1927, In Spite of Handicaps and Portraits in Color. Both had been awarded the Spingarn Medal, the highest laurel conferred by the NAACP for accomplishments within the field of race relations. They were also active members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, as was W. E. B. Du Bois. Robeson and Yergan were especially concerned with the colonial situation and its effects on Africa’s scions and were united in their conviction that Americans of African descent had more than a nominal interest in the conditions faced by their kith and kin who yet resided in the ancestral continent. Finally, both men shared strongly religious backgrounds in which Christian practice included a commitment to working for social change. These common interests and Robeson’s links with radical activists would have provided many opportunities for Yergan to expand his senses and sphere of contacts.