It was all the more necessary for us to take a hard line on communist maneuvres at this time, because they had just recently had an important acquisition in their ranks. This was Max Yergan who had served for many years in the YMCA movement in South Africa; it wasn’t so strange, as I knew myself, to move from YMCA radicalism into left-wing politics, and now he was touring round Europe making contacts for his organization, the Council on African Affairs. He formally inaugurated the Council in the early forties, along with Paul Robeson, but already in the prewar period Max had been touring Europe, working among the student element. This put us in a terrible mess, because we knew very well that whoever got signed up by Yergan would then simply become part of the Russian axis, and would proceed to move according to whatever the line from Moscow was. We were particularly concerned to prevent the many South Africans from being used to this end, but I think the only man they did partly manage to use for a time was our old friend, Marco Hlubi, a Zulu, who worked as a dancer in the Negro Theatre Company at the old Unity Theatre near King’s Cross. Yergan and the communists behind him preferred to make advances towards indigenous Africans like Kenyatta or straight black Americans or West Indians.38
Sierra Leonean leader Isaac Theophilus Adunno Wallace-Johnson was a KUTVU enrollee in 1931–1932 whose movements were monitored by British intelligence. A Nnamdi Azikiwe ally, he authored a 1935 treatise on the Ashanti Confederacy and, as founder-editor of the West African Sentinel, he had been charged with sedition and was deported from Gold Coast after publishing an African Morning Post article in 1936. In a polemical reply to Italian atrocities during its invasion of Ethiopia—his Has the European a God?—Kwame Nkrumah was moved to reproduce the offending passages in toto, including the following:
He believes in the god whose name is spelt Deceit. He believes in the god whose law is “Ye strong, you must weaken the weak. Ye ‘civilised’ Europeans, you must ‘civilise’ the ‘barbarous’ Africans with machine guns. Ye Christian Europeans, you must ‘Christianise’ the pagan Africans with bombs, poison gases.”… In the Colonies the Europeans believe in the god that commands “Ye Administrators, make Sedition Bill to keep the African gagged, make Deportation Ordinance to send the Africans to exile whenever they dare to question your authority. Make an Ordinance to grab his money so that he cannot stand economically. Make Levy Bill to force him to pay taxes for the importation of unemployed Europeans to serve as Stool Treasurers. Send detectives to stay around the house of any African who is nationally conscious and who is agitating for national independence and if possible round him up in ‘criminal frame up’ so that he could be kept behind the bars.”39
His Highness Prince Akiki K. Nyabongo was also well known to the Robesons. In 1936, he had guided Essie during her East African travels as Yergan had done in the South. An author, the prince penned The Story of an African Chief and Africa Answers Back. Cousin to the ruling Omukama, monarch of Uganda’s Toro, Nyabongo (an Oxford anthropology fellow student of Essie’s when she attended the London School of Economics), was like Kropotkin a rebel-aristocrat, a royalist dedicated to democracy. His books argued for relativism and rationalism in dealing with Africa. Essie might have felt he would be a good fit.40
Don M’Timkulu met Yergan in his dormitory days at Fort Hare, after graduating in the class of 1927—that is to say, well before he was the Marxist-Leninist Govan Mbeki befriended in 1934. He, along with Essie Robeson and Kenyatta, was studying at the London School of Economics. Sharing church background and social gospel leanings with Yergan, M’Timkulu had a different relationship to the Bunche gathering. A Bunche acquaintance, he and the politics professor had met a year earlier as students in the States, M’Timkulu at Yale, Bunche at Harvard. Having received the same scholarship, they were both in England, and they had much to discuss. As M’Timkulu was still living in “student digs,” he was pleased at Bunche’s largesse in sharing hearth and hospitality. Prior to this meeting, Bunche’s invitation had stated that he would have a few guests, including Padmore, which piqued M’Timkulu’s curiosity. He viewed Pan-Africanism as being of “academic interest,” and so was pleased to have been included. The fact that Max Yergan was there proved an added boon, since he had not seen the ex-Y man in some time and was extremely excited at having an opportunity to catch up on things with him. In contrast to Bunche’s writeup of the conversation, he remembered Yergan listening very intently to the day’s proceedings but not saying much himself.41
M’Timkulu’s attitude toward the Pan-Africanists, and that of his crony, Z. K. Matthews, was skeptical. They viewed the movement not in the abstract but in terms of the concrete situation facing them as Black South Africans. M’Timkulu and Matthews, while sympathetic to the causes of their colonized continental cohorts, nevertheless saw their own social formation as a mixed society—albeit a grotesquely unequal one. For them the priority was not throwing the “Europeans” out (despite the fact that their Xhosa-speaking colleagues had seen this as an article of faith for more than a century) but effectuating participation in a democracy. M’Timkulu, while elated at hearing these debates, was moved just as much by the prospect of meeting Pan-African personalities, orthodox and unorthodox, Robeson in particular. In this he may have shared something with Bunche, whose views on Pan-Africanism were broadly similar, if, as Bunche biographer Brian Urquhart suggests, Bunche saw the trend as a distraction. Also like M’Timkulu, Bunche was moved by Robeson’s gift with children.
Following closely on the heels of conversations with Maran in Paris and Bunche, et al., in London, Yergan further prosecuted his campaign of recruiting members of the African, African-American, Afro–West Indian, and left-liberal White intelligentsia for service in the ICAA. On the last day of April, he even reached the Lion of Judah. As he informed followers and friends, Yergan journeyed from London to Bath to arrange an audience with aides of an eminent East African monarch exiled by fascistic dogs of war: “Yesterday I went back to Bath in England, to the estate where the Emperor of Ethiopia has temporarily retired. My talk there with a member of the Emperor’s staff is a story in itself.”42 His efforts were richly rewarded in late May with a check for fifteen hundred dollars of “seed money” from aide-de-camp Paul Robe-son.43 Yergan’s twenty-one days in Europe had been both eventful and productive, leading him to issue the following brief to his constituents:
Three weeks in Europe have brought me into touch with a number of effective people, here again revealed to me something of the nature of the fast-moving history which each day unfolds, and have made clearer the forces behind that history. It is not enough, for instance, to say that the fascist forces in Spain yesterday rained death from the air upon hundreds of civilians in the Basque country; it must be added that the very nature of fascism whether in Spain, Ethiopia, America or Japan leads to precisely these results, effect inevitably following cause. The connection between men and events is the lesson of all history.44
As mentioned earlier, after the 1936 National Negro Congress Max traveled to Moscow on a tour that might have reached all the way to the fearsome head of state. One author wrote that he joined William L. Patterson, who introduced him to Molotov and Stalin.45 The next year, 1937, permitted Yergan to deepen his interest and involvement in the National Negro Congress while also constructing another organization. With Paul Robeson he laid plans for an International Committee on African Affairs. Taking part of its name from the globalist trend to which he had devoted one-third of his life, the International Committee of the YMCA, Max, with Robeson, strove to create a lobby group intended to influence U.S. Africa policy in a favorable direction. Pivotal to the ICAA’s organizing strategy was the network of African-American intellectuals he had met in two decades of YMCA visits to historically Black colleges and universities. Assisting in this was Frieda Neugebauer, who relocated from South Africa to work as Yergan’s secretary.
The demands of the ICAA and NNC often overlapped, giving free rein to the many facets of Yergan’s personality. In the same way that Max’s Afri
can expertise won him an NNC platform, his global interests found expression in the International Committee. He surrounded himself with persons of diverse ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds, and this made the ICAA an unusual site in interwar-era North America. While South Africa had a central place in its work, the ICAA was a clearinghouse for information on the continent as a whole; its Africana library was among the best in the country, perhaps in the Western world, reflecting the wide network of contacts of its founders and those they recruited. Between them, the ICAA and NNC presented a striking panorama of modern African history.
Max’s first targets were people inside or close to South Africa, including Ralph Bunche,46 ANC president A. B. Xuma, and AAC leader Professor D. D. T. Jabavu. Invited too were Europe-based progressives like colonial critic Leonard Woolf, Afro-Antillean Parisian novelist René Maran, author of the prize-winning Batouala,47 and U.S. residents Mary van Kleeck and Mary Fleddérus, who collaborated on works of political economy, dividing their time between America and Europe. In the spring they arranged for Yergan to participate in a conference sponsored by the International Industrial Relations Institute (IIRI). A year later, a revised version of his IIRI paper was published as Gold and Poverty in South Africa. This European junket, beginning in London and extending into the continent, cemented the foundation of the International Committee and buttressed Yergan’s career. The year 1937 also marked a reunion with A. B. Xuma, who sailed to the United States in May. On September 7, Max fêted guests Xuma and Jabavu at New York’s International House.
For Max, being in their presence must have seemed like old times. In an event sponsored by the ICAA, both Jabavu and Xuma spoke frankly about South Africa, with Channing H. Tobias presiding.48 Their candor so upset Thomas J. Jones that he fired off an angry letter.49 Jones’s reaction notwithstanding, this was an auspicious beginning for the committee. By spring Max had also managed to secure an adjunct appointment at New York’s City College to teach Negro history, the first Black American so honored.50
City College of New York, 1937–1941
As shown above, a large part of the reason for Yergan’s rapid rise in New York after fifteen years in Africa lay in his connection to the Harlem branch of the National Negro Congress, which maintained regular contact with the Harlem section of the Communist Party. The Party sponsored a cultural thrust of its own, extending to students in area schools, notably those attending the City College of New York (CCNY). In mid-April 1937, CCNY’s Frederick Douglass Society, a campus body interested in studying Negro life and history, lobbied in-tensively to recommend Max Yergan for an appointment to the instructional staff.
They were assisted in their campaign by a handful of leftist instructors, including historian Philip Foner and English teachers Morris Urman Schappes and David Goldway. Foner, Schappes, and Goldway had seen some of Yergan’s writing51 and found him impressive as a speaker.52 Progressive CCNY faculty, staff, and students had by then been pressing for the hiring of African-American faculty for some time.53 The Teacher’s Union and some campus Communists played a vanguard role in this campaign.54 By spring 1937, the fruits of that agitation were partly realized as news articles announced Max would teach Negro history at the college in the fall semester.55
When Max appeared on campus on a Wednesday that autumn, Schappes, Foner and Goldway, wishing to show hospitality to the new faculty colleague by taking him to lunch, found him refused service by dining room staff in the Main Tower overlooking the Harlem River. Their response to this was immediate and vociferous—the trio held a demonstration, loudly accosting other diners until the college food staff, embarrassed, made an exception.56
A similar disturbance was generated by the issue of accommodations. Having resided in rather commodious quarters on the Fort Hare campus, Yergan took an unprecedented step shortly after his repatriation home by purchasing a house in what had theretofore been an all-White block on Hamilton Terrace, just off the City College campus. His move was met with a very disquieting, although not unfamiliar, local reaction. A group of neighborhood hoodlums, thought to be parishioners at a neighboring Catholic church, allegedly hurled projectiles through his windows, smashing several of them. When progressive supporters of Yergan’s candidacy learned of this unexpected act of vandalism, a demonstration was organized at the college campus. The demonstrators marched to the scene of the crime, chanting appropriate slogans along the way, and then, pausing to survey Yergan’s damaged domicile, resumed their trek to the Catholic church, where they repeated the display. The depredations came to an end, but thereafter, an observer suggested, White residents began moving out of the area.57
The circumstances surrounding Yergan’s appointment, his public allies, and the way he conducted himself all gave Yergan the appearance of a high-profile left-wing instructor.58 In a place and time where such ideology mattered greatly, that had both positive and negative effects.
The syllabus for Yergan’s course, “Negro History and Culture,” tells us much about his approach to the topic:59
THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
History 168
Dr. Yergan
NEGRO HISTORY AND CULTURE
Assignments I–V
Prehistory, General Background
Continent of Africa
Schmucker, Woodson, Delafosse, Boas, Mair, Soga
Journal of Negro History (as indicated)
Attention is directed principally to the African continent in studying the background of the Negro peoples. Stages and characteristics of cultural development in Africa in many aspects resemble cultural developments elsewhere. Indeed the early and subsequent advances of man in Africa were a part of the general human experience. We shall examine man’s experiences in the Nile Valley as well as cultural development in other parts of the continent including the Bantu of Southern Africa and other groups in Central and West Africa.
I. ORIGINS—Man in general—Man in Africa Schmucker, pp. 12–23; 24–42; 257–259 Delafosse, pp. 1–26; Woodson, I 3–19; II—1–21
II.BASIC FACTORS INFLUENCING AFRICAN CULTURE, Schmucker, pp. 165–168; Delafosse, 149–161; Woodson I—pp. 22–36
A. Environmental Surroundings
1. River valleys, mountains, deserts, plateau areas
2. Geographical isolation
3. Soil conditions—vegetation
4. Climate—heat, rains
B. Equipment—human, natural
1. The African—a man
2. Stone, copper, iron, gold, etc. and their uses
3. Tools and implements
C. Adaptation to environment
1. Finding food and shelter
2. Pastoral movements
3. Domestication of animals
4. Agricultural Development
III. THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY IN AFRICA
Woodson I—pp. 149–156; Mair pp. 30–77; Delafosse pp. 162–171; 172–193
A. Life in the family—Mair, pp. 30–77
1. Organizational beginnings
2. Power of parents
3. Position of children; their training
4. Customs and their significance at birth, adolescence, marriage
B. The Tribe and Clan—Mair, pp. 173–204; Soga, pp. 15–19; Delafosse 162–172
1. The chieftainship
2. Political organization
3. Tribal authority
4. Custom enforcement
5. Ownership of property; inheritance
C. Land in the life of the tribe—Mair; pp. 154–172 Delafosse pp. 162–72; Soga, 383–5
1. Theories about land
2. Land ownership
3. Use of land
IV. MENTAL MANIFESTATIONS
Schmucker, pp. 127–135; Delafosse, 214–245; Woodson I, 149–167; Soga, Chap. VII to X inclusive
A. Concepts of good and evil
B. Art representations of mental concepts including plastic and graphic mediums, dance and music
C. Primitive religious beliefs and customs
and theories of life
The syllabus as represented in this excerpt suggested that Yergan had a keen familiarity with contemporary currents in African studies, as each title referenced in this syllabus offered up-to-date information and ideas. It is also certain that Max’s orientation would have been shaped both by missionary readings, on the one hand, and his more recent immersion in Marxist-Leninist theory, on the other.
In the same season, Yergan’s association with the National Negro Congress grew. Between his connection to the CCNY Left and his office in the NNC it was just a matter of time before Max’s prominence in pro-Communist circles would attract government attention. While government scrutiny may have begun as early as 1936 with his Soviet tour, the firmest evidence of surveillance dates from the next year. In his capacity as assistant to John P. Davis, Yergan wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt requesting a meeting to talk about Scottsboro, proposed antilynching legislation, and other potential legislative enactments “affecting Negro people.”60 He sought an audience with the president around November 16 or 17.61 As with any letter to the White House, this one set off security queries about the writer’s identity and history. The prominent reference to the Scottsboro case was duly noted. Several attempts to arrange a meeting with NNC representatives proved unavailing.62 This created a paper trail that eventually led to the FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover.
In December, responding to Black YMCA veteran and Lincoln University dean of men Frank Wilson, Yergan undertook a speaking tour. Wilson had asked Max to give three presentations: a Saturday supper meeting for thirty students, faculty, and staff, focusing on ethnic minority groups around the world, including South Africa; a Sunday morning service stressing the importance of religion in facing the world’s great challenges; and a Sunday afternoon faculty forum on South Africa.63 An article in the school newspaper stressed that Max had quit South Africa YMCA work upon realizing “that the problems of the Africans were mostly political and economic, and the policy of the YMCA was not formulated to meet the needs of these millions of subjected people.”64
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