Max Yergan
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On November 7, 1931, Derricotte suffered major tissue damage sustained in an automobile accident and was in effect assassinated by racism. She had been driving from Nashville, Tennessee, to Athens, Georgia, intending to visit her mother, when her car crashed near Dalton, Georgia. Gravely injured, she was cruelly denied admission to a nearby White hospital. She was then forced to endure an agonizing ten-mile ambulance ride to a local “Colored” hospital in Chattanooga, where Fisk University’s dean of women expired. The tragedy of Derricotte’s premature, mortifying demise shocked and saddened not only her Y colleagues but all who had known of her. In a tender appreciation introducing a 1936 monograph about her, Yergan inscribed this modest but impassioned expression of remembrance:
I shall, above everything else, remember her for her quality of true friendship; such a quality is so rare, so necessary, and so seldom found in any real and enduring sense, that Juliette Derricotte’s conception and practice of it constitute one of her unique gifts to our time. Our race could ill afford to lose such a gifted member; the larger human and spiritual cause, which she served transcending race and nation, is now without one of its strongest and proved advocates; the realm of friendship has in its ranks an empty place because we mourn the untimely death of this sweet and gentle soul.92
A Double Life
Over the course of the 1930s Yergan began leading a double life. On the surface he continued to discharge his day-to-day duties as a YMCA secretary in the service of the SCA. After hours, however, he coached young Africans in the socialist tradition, introducing them to radical concepts and revolutionary literature in night schools and on guided tours. One of these pupils was Govan Mbeki, released from Robben Island in 1987, after twenty-three years of imprisonment. On several occasions during his life Mbeki had gone on record crediting Max Yergan with his radicalization. He has stated that in his presentations to Mbeki and other young colleagues, Yergan was “utterly convincing.” So complete was Yergan’s mastery of this double role that the majority of people, including even Mbeki, who were familiar with him as a YMCA worker had little awareness of his extracurricular activities until years afterward.
Precisely when this radical activity began is unclear, but its effect upon Yergan’s professional persona was evident by 1932. Concluding an annual report for that year, surveying the events, travails, and accomplishments of the prior twelve months, he wrote openly and at length about something new:
No one will be surprised to learn that communistic propaganda is finding fertile field in South Africa. Efforts have been made in the courts to stamp out such propaganda, but these efforts have not succeeded because of the reality of the legal provisions for the freedom of speech. The communist paper [Umsebenzi, The Worker] a clipping of which I attach to this report, is circulated weekly throughout South Africa, and is read by most Africans to whom it can be sent or who themselves may obtain copies of it. It is remarkable that such a paper is permitted, but it is more remarkable that there are no more serious outbreaks than we have. I do not mean to say that there are not frequent uprisings on the part of labouring Africans against government officials and sometimes their employers, but the striking fact is that while a number of Africans are exposed to such propaganda, they have not in any large numbers acted precipitately. The communist appeal is being discussed in almost every village, for the workers from the mines take back with them news of what they have heard, and it is safe to say that the most remote part of Southern Africa as well as other sections in the North from which South African labour is drawn are being affected in thought by those whose mission it is to propagate the new ideas.… I have no desire to contrast Christianity with communism, but I cannot refrain from observing that communism offers to Christianity its supreme opportunity as a force for social regeneration, and there is no place in the world where this is more true than here in Africa.
Yergan may not have openly desired to contrast Christianity with communism, but he was familiar with at least one contemporary theologian who dared to do precisely that, Episcopal bishop W. Montgomery Brown, heretical author of the controversial Communism and Christianism, a notorious social gospel tract that purported to relate and reconcile the precepts of Christ, Darwin, and Marx. Communism and Christianism, widely read in the 1930s, influenced many religiously inclined progressives in South Africa. One, Albert T. Nzula, a pioneering African Communist Party general secretary, went on record as having learned a great deal from it and was fired from a teaching position for his candor, precipitating a truly meteoric radical career. In this sense, the passage above reflects even further the contradictions inherent in Yergan’s position. Unable to openly state his support for what was officially considered subversive albeit marginally legitimate conduct, because the “communist appeal” was so vital a force during his time in South Africa, Yergan was compelled to comment upon it. His concluding sentence shows that he felt moved by this request. It is thus vital to consider what motivated Yergan to follow in the footsteps “of those whose mission it is to propagate the new ideas.”
South Africa during the 1920s and 1930s was a haven for political refugees fleeing from European ferment. After the Bolshevik revolution and throughout the consolidation of Soviet power, revolutionary activists of every stripe, ranging from Russian émigrés to Labor Zionists, poured into the country in great numbers. Among these were many highly politicized Eastern European Jews fleeing religious, ethnic, and official persecution. Several of these new emigrants also had extensive experience in labor agitation, having fought against tsarist police and challenged oppressive regimes like that of imperial Germany. The most politically sophisticated of these migrant militants initiated instruction for workers, often in Marxist study circles taught in evening schools. Along with their predecessors in South Africa, mainly those associated with the tradition of left-wing industrial radicalism in Great Britain, these instructors stimulated dissemination of socialist literature and facilitated party building.
Yergan’s activity so closely resembled the work of these militants that the similarity could not have been coincidental. Because his activity was clandestine, however, evidence detailing how he politicized African youth and students is very scarce. Indeed, if such documents ever existed they may never come to light, due to the precautions necessary for this work. But select personal testimonies bear witness to his influence, chiefly those of Wycliffe M. Tsotsi, “Roch” Fanana Fobo, and Govan Mbeki, each of whom attended Fort Hare in Yergan’s final years of YMCA service in South Africa, from his 1932 WSCF resignation on.
Wycliffe Mlungisi Tsotsi was a Fort Hare student during the 1930s. He met Yergan in 1932. Tsotsi remembered Yergan as having been a resolute foe of segregation, a stance apparent from their very first encounter. Two points impressed him about Yergan, his intensity and his profound commitment. The former was manifested in Yergan’s frequent exhortations to “cut deep,” meaning to delve beyond the surface of things and not to approach them superficially. Yergan’s dedication prompted Tsotsi to join the All Africa Convention at its inception in 1935, a decision that became crucial to his career. It was only later that he learned of a trip Yergan made to the USSR. Consistent with other sources, Tsotsi also recollected that Yergan was secretive and did not want the authorities to know his real feelings.
Yergan left South Africa with his family early in 1933, arriving in the States in late April. There he embarked upon a series of public speaking engagements timed to coincide with his receipt of the NAACP’s highest accolade, the Spingarn Medal. Capping a decision-making process dating from the close of January, Yergan’s selection was a subject of an internal memo composed by Dr. Du Bois:
The Committee feels that Max Yergan of the YMCA in South Africa is the logical candidate for the award this year. He has done an unusual and self-sacrificing work covering a number of years and succeeded year before last in assembling the first South African Interracial Conference. The results of this Conference during the year 1932 have been very encouraging. We feel
that this is the high mark of Mr. Yergan’s career and that on account of his family and other conditions, he may be leaving South Africa in the near future.93
The NAACP announced the choice in March, singling Yergan out as “a missionary of intelligence, tact and self-sacrifice, representing the gift of cooperation and culture which American Negroes may send back to their Motherland” and acclaiming his feat of having “inaugurated last year an unusual local movement for interracial understanding among black and white students.”94 Arriving in New York, he garnered considerable attention in the African-American press through the ensuing month.95 Toward late May Yergan sat on the dais as one of the speakers at an interracial dinner on the subject of South Africa given at the George Washington Hotel, sponsored by the Department of Race Relations and the African Welfare Committee of the Federal Council of Churches (FCC). Appearing alongside Yergan were Oswin B. Bull, formerly YMCA head at Cape Town, now director of technical education for the Basutoland government, and the FCC’s Dr. George E. Haynes, who acted as emcee.96 On June 11, at its annual Sunday commencement ceremony, Yergan was awarded an honorary Master of Humanics for his South African service, from Springfield College, the YMCA’s degree-granting institution. At the time the Master of Humanics was the highest degree offered there. Yergan had attended the school from 1914 to 1915, during which time he took the secretary’s course. As he presented Yergan with the degree, Blake Hoover, secretary of the Springfield Y, spoke of Yergan’s accomplishments, singling out his contribution to racial understanding between South Africa and America.
On Saturday evening, July 1, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal. Two weeks later colleague Channing Tobias praised his performance and that of sociologist Ira de A. Reid, at an annual Y lay conference.97 Early in September, South African–born educator, humanitarian, and sometime adviser on Native affairs, Charles T. Loram, wrote F. P. Keppel of the Carnegie Corporation to convey his impressions of Yergan’s revised African training institute proposal, expressing out his view that Yergan “makes a very good case” and hoped for funding.98 Late in October, Yergan addressed the Kiwanis Club of Boston.
In early December, Yergan was the honored guest at the Founder’s Day celebration for famed Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta. Before he exited New York, however, he made contact with Robert M. Lester of Carnegie, providing Lester with a followup on his proposal. Yergan’s note to Lester contained a report, dated December 1, 1933, appended to a cover letter, which included the following information:
I should like to take the liberty of enlarging upon the reference in my report to a memorandum which I have submitted to the President of the Carnegie Corporation, embodying a description of the proposed Institute for Training Social Workers in South Africa and a request for a grant towards the support of the Institute. As stated in my report, while certain progress has been made under the corporation’s grant to us, the bulk of the grant remains unexpended in view of the fact that we have felt it unwise to give effect to a program, which would have called for the expenditure during the past two years of the entire grant, before we could know definitely of our ability to secure the funds required to give effect to an inclusive program. This inclusive program involves the strengthening of our present service and the addition of the Institute already referred to. As soon as information reaches me with regard to action of the Trustees of the Corporation, we shall be in position to go ahead with the sort of inclusive program possible in the light of the awaited action of the Corporation’s Trustees.99
The next few months saw Yergan traveling and giving sermons and speeches at local YMCAs, churches and academic institutions, still collecting funds to augment his foundation grants-in-aid. At the same time, his training institute was dissected and discussed in both New York and South Africa. He, his work, and the institute came up in a variety of contexts. Prior to leaving South Africa, Yergan had assisted Howard Pim in planning a study tour of the Transkei, made under Carnegie auspices. The tour’s report, published late in 1933, was circulated and read by January 1934. Loram was underwhelmed by Pim’s effort, to say the least, writing,
The report is somewhat slight and does not add materially to our knowledge of the social and economic situation in the Transkeian territories. As you will have noticed, much of the information is already contained in other reports and there is a regrettable absence of the real research which is needed to check up on current generalizations about the condition of the country.100
In contrast to other similarly critical reactions, Yergan approached Pim’s work with a wholly different spirit. Whether this was affected by his own relationship with Pim or his lack of graduate certification as a Ph.D. (unlike Dr. Loram) is uncertain. Nevertheless, his pithy, more charitable critique, cabled to Carnegie president F. P. Keppel, appeared as follows:
Have read Transkei enquiry carefully and understand it does not purport to be exhaustive document it is of specialized rather than general usefulness and presupposes considerable knowledge of South Africa by average reader chapters on education and economic commission report are very helpful and justify publication to which I do not think any South African community or government can take exception stop mailing document today.101
Late in April 1934, South African–based Carnegie Corporation trustee Patrick Duncan reported that the corporation’s South African Advisory Committee, after consultation with Joint Council head and South African Institute of Race Relations director J. D. Rheinallt Jones regarding Yergan’s institute proposals, concurred with the latter that the scheme was too ambitious. The fund’s trustee went on, stating, “I am informed that Principal Kerr of the South African Native College is in entire agreement with Mr. Jones’s criticism and suggestions.”102
By mid-May 1934 the Boston Evening Transcript reported that Yergan was spending much of his furlough in Beantown. While YMCA leader John R. Mott was touring South Africa and surveying his work, Yergan was speaking to audiences about life in the embattled Union. Harping on themes he had developed in earlier writings and public talks, he emphasized gold and its effect upon the political penetration of Africa by foreign invaders, coupled with the development of the productive forces of these lands by the same elements and the simultaneous emergence of an intractable race problem. Of the latter, Yergan told his Boston audience,
These Europeans consider themselves permanent residents of South Africa, but they are very much aware of their European historical and cultural background. It is this background which has made them develop the modern and progressive cities of Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, to construct modern railroads, to establish promising leather, steel, chemical and furniture industries, to provide universities, elementary schools, women’s clubs and child welfare societies.103
Yergan contrasted the growth and development of economic relations yielding wealth for powerful Whites with the abysmal man-made social and political handicaps faced by the mass of Africans. Acknowledging the Africans’ numerical superiority and the rising pressure to conform to changes forced upon them by industrial life, he asked his Boston audience to carefully consider this question:
How many members of various classes, races and cultures who find themselves in the same community live together with a measure of mutuality and common effort toward the common good, without violence being done to the personality of one group by the other?
The measure of his achievement in South Africa, Yergan contended, was in the efforts undertaken by the YMCA to build character as a prime ingredient in the creation of leadership, as well as reconciliation between Africans and Europeans, an illustration of which was the fact that while previously proscribed from the White universities, he now claimed to have more invitations to these than he could accept.
Barely a fortnight after Yergan’s Boston appearance, he heard from Carnegie Corporation head Frederick Keppel. Keppel informed Yergan that, having been in contact with Patrick Duncan and having examined the comments prepared by Rheinallt Jones regarding his training institute
proposal, Carnegie’s South African Advisory Committee offered its opinion that the institute should be mounted by Fort Hare under the control of the institution’s council and senate and directed by Principal Kerr. The Advisory Committee also wished for the government to be asked to contribute toward salaries, while Carnegie’s funding would be used for equipment, scholarships, and organizing purposes, and suggested an application of four thousand dollars per year for a period of four years.104
Yergan’s response to Keppel, sent one month later, noted Keppel’s letter and stated Yergan’s willingness to act upon the Carnegie Corporation Advisory Committee’s suggestion regarding Fort Hare connections.105 It is doubtful that the sensitive Yergan failed to discern the all-too-subtle undermining of his authority that had taken place, however.
Among many of the generation of students who like Yergan himself had been products of historically Black colleges, however, the YMCA secretary was often viewed as a formidable figure at that time. The future historian John Hope Franklin recalled this image of him:
When I was at Fisk University between 1931 and 1935, Max Yergan was one of our heroes. The stories of his work in Africa as a member of the staff of the YMCA captured our imaginations, and I can still remember his visit to Fisk, at commencement time in 1934 I believe. It was the first time I saw him.… The impression was favorable, and we placed him in the category of Du Bois, McDowell, Mordecai Johnson, and Howard Thurman. It was not that we knew all that much about him. It was that he had performed “good works” in Africa.106