The greatest need of the masses of Africa today is organization along industrial lines. It is necessary for the Africans to organize and to educate in order to give each child and adult a firm, deeply-rooted conception of the good life for him and the community.15
Seeking to cultivate left-leaning Howard politics professor Ralph Johnson Bunche, then preparing a research tour of South Africa, Yergan shared his enthusiasm about Russia following his winter 1936 tour, noting that Bunche, too, had thought of visiting Russia. Yergan offered to help Bunche in South Africa, giving Bunche his take:
Developments in South Africa will be familiar to you: legislative repression on the part of the government; increasing poverty on the part of the people; and groping blindness on the part of the middle class. Meanwhile underground movements are becoming more active. I hope you and your family are well.16
Bunche’s response suggests some discomfort. He demurred, citing with arctic elegance a simultaneous note from mentor-sponsor Isaac Schapera, University of Cape Town anthropology professor, who insisted on arranging his trip. Feigning interest in Max’s continental junket and recent thoughts on fascist Italy, Bunche professed eager anticipation of a “long pow wow” with Yergan upon his return.
In June 1936, a second All African Convention convened, with Yergan and Essie Robeson in attendance. It elected fresh officers: former ANC president Professor D. D. T. Jabavu, now AAC president; Dr. A. B. Xuma, vice-president; Dr. J. S. Moroka, treasurer; H. Selby Msimang, general secretary; R. H. Godlo, recording secretary; and Professor Z. K. Matthews, adviser. Max Yergan remained as secretary of External Affairs, his most visible connection to the AAC in the country itself, although this was his final conference appearance. The convention lasted from 29 June through 12 July; by 30 July, Fort Hare said goodbye to Max and Susie Yergan. On 9 August, they sailed aboard the RMS Windsor Castle.
While Yergan struggled unsuccessfully to meet Bunche personally prior to his departure, he heard from a perturbed Xuma, who questioned, “Why are you so silent?”
Politically, things do not look too bright. The Government are advancing with their policy of control without hindrance and have even succeeded in electing one of their own as Governor-General in the name of Mr. Patrick Duncan. One can see how farcical a position of Governor-General is becoming. It is purely a political reward to one of those who have defended the policies of the government.17
In a lengthy letter, Xuma relayed the sad story that “the Convention has not made any spectacular moves yet,” adding more optimistically, “but I hope to be sending you some interesting news about its activity as a result of certain lines of action that I have suggested.” Of Jabavu Xuma wrote, “Our old friend D. J. as usual is apparently holding the trump card that nobody can guess as yet.” Irksome too was the AAC’s lack of a printed organ to publicize its programs, leading the physician to lament,
I have been much concerned about the future of our Organisation, as we have no organ with which to popularise our propaganda. As you know the so-called African papers, the “Umteteli,” “Imvo,” “Bantu World,” etc., are controlled by interests that would not be too happy if the Organisation were to be a success. The attack is either a silent boycott or the usual paternal advice to our African leaders. It would have served the interests of our people greatly if we could have had means to equip and finance an independent African paper. I hope I can find encouragement in that direction during my short visit over there.18
Xuma expressed anxious concern about “the establishment of a scholarship and Research Fund for Africans to study overseas and get new contacts and also to do research work here at home and overseas.” Echoing themes previously explored with Yergan (sentiments Max shared), Xuma urged, “If we could make it possible for such selected men and women to have advanced training overseas, we would be creating a broader base and a more intelligent leadership and guidance for our people.” Critical to this was finding an overseas backer to “give Fort Hare a modern and up-to-date library” and buy “complete equipment” for the college’s underfunded “Scientific laboratories.”
Yergan’s reply to Xuma’s letter took almost three months to materialize, coming as Bunche prepared to leave and brimming with news of the status of the International Committee on African Affairs. Yergan urged Xuma to bring him up to date “as soon as possible about your plans,” adding, “My own plans are taking very definite shape and I shall be writing you about them both personally and in your official capacity.” Pledging to do so within a week to ten days’ time, Max went on:
Will you further say to the officers of the convention, as well as to Messrs. Thema, Msimang and others, that you have heard from me, that there are some splendid developments about which I shall be writing them shortly, and that my desire is that they meantime hope, notwithstanding this very long delay in writing them. I hope you will make it clear to them that illness has been responsible for the delay.19
Yergan made one more attempt to reach Bunche before his Union field trip. The final predeparture letter to Bunche had two aims: first, to arrange a London encounter; second, to provide preliminary information on work currently in progress involving the International Committee on African Affairs. Max pronounced the new committee “under way,” identifying Raymond F. Buell, Mary van Kleeck, Hubert T. Delaney, and Mrs. John F. Moors of Brookline, Massachusetts, as having accepted his invitation to join. Repeating some language used in a letter to Xuma the day before Bunche sailed, Yergan set forth the ICAA’s three principal purposes: researching policy and legislative enactments, finding and training selected Africans, and connecting with the cooperative movement.
Since some of his postresignation public pronouncements sparked controversies in quarters where he was known, one of Yergan’s first steps in laying the groundwork for a new career was to reestablish ties with former friends and associates from his YMCA days. They required reassurances of steadfastness where Africa and the association were concerned. He gave this in a note posted in February 1937. Replying to critics, it began,
The idea seems to have entered the minds of a few of my friends that I am no longer interested in the work which I did for fifteen years in South Africa. Nothing would be further from the truth. While I know that most people are aware of my continued interest in our African work, it occurs to me that I should send this letter in order that there may be no misunderstanding whatever.20
Adopting an earnest narrative tone, Yergan reiterated the centrality of the cause to which he had dedicated decades of his life, emphasizing that he extracted from his previous work inspiration for his present endeavor. Readers could still sense the spiritual animus sparking his mission labors:
Within its established principles the International Committee of the Y.M.C.A. gave me more or less a free hand in my capacity as Senior Secretary of the South African work. It was therefore possible for me to give expression to my own ideas and to utilize my efforts and energy as I thought best in the year-to-year promotion of the Association work in that field. It is therefore inconceivable that I could suddenly lose interest in what is, after all, the expression of years of service. For this and other reasons it is possible for me to say to you without reservation whatever that I am not only interested in the work which we have developed in South Africa, but interested in the sense that I want to see that work continued. With this in mind, it is my hope that our South African work will still be a channel through which the Association movement here will find means of expressing its interest in the worldwide program.21
Then, making a special plea to his YMCA family, Yergan showed that he had not abandoned them. This reminded them of what they still meant to him in spite of his now attenuated relationship to the Y. Since Y service and Africa were closely tethered for those who knew him, he carefully cinched both connections in such a way as to counter rumor mongering:
The same reasoning which has led a few people to imagine that my interest in the African work has become less has caused some to think that my
relationship to our Associations here at home is less than in the past. May I, with all the emphasis possible, state that this is in no sense true. Not only do I feel as close to the Association movement here as I have always felt but, in view of my continued though somewhat changed relationship to Africa, I have every reason and desire for maintaining and strengthening my Association relationships here in America. There is no basis whatever for any misunderstanding between myself and the Association movement here; and I am particularly anxious to make it perfectly clear to the secretaries and the laymen with whom I have had long years of contact and between whom and myself real friendships have developed that I desire to be thought of always as one of their number.22
He closed his letter with the promise that he would be “glad to send shortly a statement” about his “new relationship to Africa,” underscoring his aim of clarifying “that the work in Africa is our work and should be supported and that I am always one with my Association workers.”23 In fact, the YMCA network was Max’s core constituency and would so remain thereafter.
The note elicited a favorable response from Xuma. Yergan’s plan grew directly out of his Fort Hare experience of identifying and training “a select number of Africans.” This was the scheme that found expression in the institute that he held had been “blocked by government” and other opponents. Still holding out hope for such training to occur in the Union, Max argued that an alternative was to bring Africans to the United States and Europe. Their study “would be broadly based,” with emphasis on “scientific training in economics and sociology.”24
Xuma was enthusiastic about this idea, telling Yergan, “It made me feel quite happy and hopeful for both of us and those in whose cause we are interested.” Xuma was high on the ICAA’s potential. He and Yergan were at one in planning and envisioning aims:
I doubt if there is any scheme I would welcome more to be associated with than that outlined in your last letter. As a matter of fact, in it I find much realisation of my hopes and plans. Nothing, therefore, would give me more pleasure than to play my little part in the furtherance of the aims and objects of the proposed committee.25
Xuma wrote as if the ICAA might fulfill his own dreams regarding data collection, documenting and disseminating his own vision of African elite formation. Seeing both scholarly and political value in the ICAA, he replied,
It should give close contact between us and scope for research, and exercise of our intellectual powers in gathering and giving the necessary information on this Continent. It would also necessitate close and more frequent contacts between us by going to and fro, writing or reporting about the findings.26
Max next headed for Europe. He first went to London, knowing this colonial metropole had always attracted guest workers, students, and countless other emigrants, many from Africa and the Antilles, and while there he met leaders with a wide range of political leanings. The Robe-sons knew many of these leaders, especially those involved in progressive political and cultural work. They frequently were the Robesons’ guests and attended his performances. Paul and Essie in turn had reciprocated by supporting their work in every moral and material way possible. En route to Europe, Yergan contacted Xuma again, praising his New Year’s address, which had been printed in Bantu World, and expressing faith in the All Africa Convention.27 A day earlier he had written Bunche, who with his spouse Ruth had been visiting London since February.28
As he had done with Xuma, Yergan indicated to Bunche that he had had other meetings prior to leaving New York. This time he told Bunche of a talk with Margaret Wrong of Edinburgh House in London. Wrong, a missionary literacy specialist with considerable African experience, had already published Africa and the Making of Books: Being a Survey of Africa’s Need for Literature (1934) and The Land and Life of Africa (1935). In spite of his impatience with some missionaries, Yergan’s impressions of his time spent with Wrong provoked a ringing endorsement:
She will be back in London late in April and she will be desirous of seeing you, if you can find the time. I think it will be especially nice if Mrs. Bunche could meet her and the people she knows. Her connections are missionary but she is a splendid person herself and her friends are worth knowing.29
Despite recent criticisms Yergan clearly had not cut all ties to the moderate missionary and philanthropic establishment. His ongoing relationships with them were consistent. In Paris he spent at least a day visiting Afro-Antillean author René Maran (1887–1960), whose novella Batouala had won the French Academy’s Prix Goncourt in 1921. A friend of Howard’s illustrious Alain Locke, Maran was enlisted by Yergan to join the ICAA.
Maran had spent thirteen years as a colonial civil servant in French-ruled Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic). His prize-winning work portrayed an African prince criticizing pseudocivilizing colonialism, a stance influenced by the negritude movement. By 1928, however, the same work lauded seven years earlier was banned in the colonies. Yet Maran himself, like Yergan, was ambivalent on the colonial question. Writing from London on May Day Yergan quoted Maran (whom he misidentified as African), saying, “For the first time in my life I have enthusiasm for the policy of a French government.”30
Yergan’s circuit included Marseilles, then Belgium and the Netherlands, where he met Mary van Kleeck and Mary Fleddérus. These women were associated with the International Institute on Industrial Relations, under whose auspices he would deliver a paper at the Hague during the summer on “Standards of Living in Colonial Areas.”31 He enlisted both for the ICAA.
Yergan and Neugebauer were in the British Isles by April 20. Alone and together, Frieda and Yergan called on the Bunches. Having encountered each other here and there around NAACP and NNC sites, Yergan and Bunche now met each other via Eslanda Robeson, although, as previously established, the two had arranged this earlier. Bunche, whose papers contained a 1928 clipping on Yergan’s efforts to secure a Rockefeller grant for his Fort Hare job, made other diaristic jottings concerning the former YMCA secretary, the tenor of which occasionally seemed to vary in tone from that of the correspondence exchanged between the two men, perhaps motivated in part by Bunche’s critical reaction to Max and Frieda. Neugebauer assisted Bunche in securing accommodations via South African sources.32
Bunche’s record listed four contacts with Yergan and Neugebauer and a private meeting with the latter concerning Cape Town lodgings. A week before their initial get-together, the New York Times duly reported that Max had been recommended to teach Negro history at City College of New York. On the same day, April 14, his likeness appeared in the Communist Party’s Daily Worker, a detail noticed by America’s federal intelligence community.33 Yergan and Bunche had their first London confab on April 21. Bunche found him “young but pleasant enuf [sic],” noting Yergan quipped that his father was “a prize s.o.b.”34 Max was keenly soliciting Bunche’s aid. Yergan’s manifest affection for Robe-son was evident, leading him to write of him and other allies:
I know of no person more constructively effective in the international life of peoples of African descent than Paul Robeson. He has given me several hours of his busy time in London. He is a power in many ways, and as we talked and planned together, I became increasingly aware of the significance of his membership in the International Committee on African Affairs. Paul Robeson, René Maran and Leonard Barnes, a noted writer on African problems, constitute the European membership of our committee. The African members will be announced shortly, and our Bulletin issued upon my return to New York by the middle of May.35
Two days later, Max and Frieda had tea with Ruth and Ralph Bunche and “Nyabonge” (Toro, Uganda, prince Akiki Nyabongo), Johnstone (Jomo) Kenyatta, D. G. S. (Don) M’Timkulu, WASU (West African Student Union) head I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson, Robeson, George Padmore, and “Ras (Teferi) Makonnen.” Bunche’s daily log read,
Max explained his African Committee and Geo [Padmore] explained the African Bureau and Journal project. Max suspicious of George’s Trotskyist sympathies but they got on oka
y.… Max may go to Spain and may be able to arrange for me to go.… Miss Neugebauer is going to aid me in finding accommodations in South Africa. Yergan and Neugebauer stayed for dinner.36
The collective considered the projected aims of the ICAA, though Padmore and Makonnen kept aloof. Padmore, born Malcolm Nurse in Trinidad and a former Bunche student at Howard, had from 1927 to 1934 overseen the Negro Bureau of the Communist International but had broken with it by 1937, becoming persona non grata. Both Pad-more and Makonnen the British Guiana–born man formerly known as George Griffiths, a former American sojourner and Colored YMCA patron who recalled Yergan from his earlier years, were now stalwart Pan-Africanists. Yergan, whose position was more orthodox in supporting the Soviet Union, seems to have adopted the Party’s view on the “heretical” Padmore. At the same time, Max did provide Bunche one pound for Padmore’s IASB (International Africa Service Bureau), if it materialized, but instructed him to destroy the check if the project did not materialize.37 Those assembled in the Bunche household represented some of the leading members of the African and Afro-Caribbean intelligentsia based in London; Max had to be impressed.
This London trip was a homecoming of sorts for Yergan. While we lack detailed information, it is clear that Max traveled there in 1931, and it is possible if not probable that he may have encountered Robeson and some of his comrades at that time. Robeson would then have been close to both Padmore and Kenyatta. Kenyatta was involved with socialism, the Communist Party, and Padmore, and Padmore, as head of the Negro Bureau, held the brief for Black subjects, including struggles by Negro toilers in Africa and the Caribbean. Indeed, he published a periodical called The Negro Worker. The colorful Makonnen, then a London restaurateur, recollected Yergan in this choice passage from his autobiography:
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