60. Die Burger, 21 July 1930.
61. M’Timkulu interview, 29 March 1994.
62. M’Timkulu interview, 29 March 1994.
63. Alexander Kerr, Fort Hare, 1915–48: The Evolution of an African College (London: C. Hurst, 1968), 162.
64. Thomas Jesse Jones to Anson Phelps Stokes, 29 August 1930, copy provided by H. Davis.
65. Appleget to Yergan, 26 September 1930, Rockefeller Foundation Collection, RG2 1930 Series 487: South Africa, Box 45, Folder 37, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC).
66. Ridgely Torrence, The Story of John Hope (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 329.
67. Yergan to “My dear dear Friends” (Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Moorland), 27 October 1931, Moorland Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
68. Yergan to “My dear dear Friends.”
69. Ruth Rouse, The World’s Student Christian Federation (London: SCM Press, 1947), 116.
70. Francis Pickens Miller, Man from the Valley: Memoirs of a Twentieth-Century Virginian (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, l969), 67.
71. On S. K. Datta’s relationship to the Indian YMCA see H. A. Popley, K. T. Paul, Christian Leader (Calcutta: YMCA Publishing House, 1938), passim. Datta edited the Indian YMCA periodical Young Men of India and was the author of such books as The Desire of India (London: 1908) and Asiatic Asia (London: 1932). Paul himself requested that Yergan spend five to six weeks visiting the main YMCA centers in Madras, Calcutta, Delhi, Lahore, and Bombay. Henri-Louis Henriod to Yergan, 7 May 1928, Box 84, WSCF Archives. Yergan first mentions Rena Datta in Yergan to F. P. Miller, WSCF Archives, Geneva.
72. Yergan, Secretary’s Record, YMCA, YMCA Bowne Historical Library; Yergan to Phelps Stokes, 25 April 1931, Anson Phelps Stokes Papers, Box 98, Folder 1592, Correspondence, Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale.
73. Cable, Miller to Martin and ’T Hooft, 28 April 1931, Miller Collection, Alderman Library.
74. Phelps Stokes to Yergan, 29 April 1931, Phelps Stokes Papers, Box 98, Folder 1592, Sterling Library, Yale University.
75. Phelps Stokes to Yergan, 29 April 1931, Phelps Stokes Papers, Box 98, Folder 1592, Sterling Library, Yale University.
76. Appleget to Yergan, 20 April 1931, Rockefeller Foundation Collection, RGS, 1931, Series 487, Yergan, Subseries, “South Africa: Yergan, Max,” Box 60, Folder 495, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC).
77. Appleget to Dr. Anson Phelps Stokes, 8 May 1931, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG2, General Correspondence 1931, Series 487, Yergan, Sub-series, “South Africa: Yergan, Max.” Box 60, Folder 495, RAC.
78. A. Lyon, J. M. Speer, and F. W. Ramsey to Phelps Stokes, 8 May 1931, Phelps Stokes Papers, Box 98, Folder 1592, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.
79. Phelps Stokes to Appleget, 11 May 1931, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, RG2, General Correspondence, 1931, Series 487, Yergan, Subseries, “South Africa: Yergan, Max,” Box 60, Folder 495, RAC.
80. A. W. Packard, “Memorandum: Y.M.C.A. Luncheon in Honor of Mr. Colton and Mr Yergan,” 20 May 1931, Rockefeller Family Archives, RG2 (OMR) Series; Welfare-Youth Box 35 Folder, YMCA-National Committee, Max Yergan Work in Africa, RAC.
81. Yergan to Saunders, April 1932, WSCF Papers, Geneva.
82. Yergan, Alice, to Hon. Patrick Duncan, Trustee, Carnegie Corporation, S.A., 14 June 1932. I thank Prof. R. Hunt Davis Jr. for sharing his notes from Carnegie Corporation Archives.
83. C. T. Loram to F. P. Keppel, 1 August 1932, from C.C. notes provided by R. Hunt Davis Jr.
84. Phelps Stokes to Yergan, Phelps Stokes Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University.
85. Stokes, Durban, to Jesse Jones, 6 September 1932, Phelps Stokes Papers, I, Box 70, Folder 1170, Sterling Library, Yale University.
86. Yergan to Henson, 1 November 1932, Box 67, File South Africa Reports, YMCA Historical Library; Yergan to Porter, 1 November, 1932, YMCA Student Division Papers, Correspondence, Box 13, Folder 191, WSCF Collection, John R. Mott Room, Divinity School Library, Yale University.
87. Porter to Yergan, 6 September 1932. YMCA Student Division Papers, Correspondence, Box 13, Folder 191, D. R. Porter to Max Yergan, WSCF Collection, Divinity School Library, Yale University.
88. Yergan to Porter, 15 November 1932, YMCA Student Division Papers, Box 13, Folder 191, Correspondence, D. R. Porter to Max Yergan, WSCF Collection, John R. Mott Room, Divinity School Library, Yale University.
89. Yergan to Porter, 15 November 1932.
90. Derricotte to Yergan, 24 July 1929, WSCF Student Division Papers, Correspondence, Box 13, Folder 191, D. R. Porter to Max Yergan, Divinity School Library, Yale University.
91. Derricotte to Yergan, 24 July 1929.
92. In Marion Cuthbert, Juliette Derricotte (New York: Woman’s Press, 1936).
93. Du Bois to the Members of the Spingarn Medal Committee, 27 January 1933, NAACP Administrative File, Subject File Awards, Spingarn Medal, 1933 NAACP Papers, Box C-212, MS Division, Library of Congress.
94. “Max Yergan, Y.M.C.A. Worker in Africa, Gets Spingarn Medal,” Press Release, NAACP Administrative File, Subject File, Awards, Spingarn Medal, 1933, NAACP Papers, Box C-212, Library of Congress.
95. “Max Yergan,” Pittsburgh Courier, 1 April, 1933; “Sees Hope for South Africa,” Boston Chronicle, 15 April 1933; “Max Yergan Speaks at Harlem YMCA,” New York Age, 22 April 1933; “Max Yergan Tells Crowd of Work Among Africans,” Chicago Defender, 23 April 1933; E. T. Rouzeau, “Teaching of Christianity Only Part of Job Says Yergan, ‘Y’ Missionary,” New York Amsterdam News, 3 May 1933.
96. “Race Problems Acute in South Africa, Say Max Yergan and O. B. Bull, Interracial Leaders There,” FCC News Release, New York City, 26 May 1933, AD 843/B97.9.2. South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR).
97. Tobias to Claude Barnett, 17 July 1933, Claude Barnett Papers/Associated Negro Press Papers, Chicago Historical Society.
98. C. T. Loram to F. P. Keppel, 6 September 1933, from notes provided by R. Hunt Davis Jr.
99. Yergan to Robert M. Lester, Carnegie Corporation, 12 December 1933, from notes provided by R. Hunt Davis Jr.
100. Loram to R. M. Lester, Carnegie Corporation, 26 January 1934, courtesy of R. Hunt Davis Jr.
101. Telegram, Yergan to Keppel, 22 February 1934, extract from notes of R. Hunt Davis Jr.
102. Patrick Duncan, to F. P. Keppel, 30 April 1934, from notes provided by R. Hunt Davis Jr.
103. C. C. Beasley, “A Negro Leader in South Africa,” Boston Evening Transcript, 19 May 1934. Copy courtesy Ruth Hartson, YMCA International Division.
104. Keppel to Yergan, New York, 29 May 1934, from notes provided by R. Hunt Davis Jr.
105. Yergan to Keppel, 22 June 1934, from notes provided by R. Hunt Davis Jr.
106. Personal communication, Professor John Hope Franklin to author, 19 January 1987.
107. C. Bundy, Learning from Robben Island: The Prison Writings of Govan Mbeki (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991).
108. Thami Mkhwanazi, “How a Schoolboy’s Rage Turned Mbeki toward Marxism,” Weekly Mail (Johannesburg), 13–19 November 1987.
109. Robert Edgar, interview with Govan Mbeki, August 1990.
110. Edgar interview, 1990.
111. Edgar interview, 1990.
112. Edgar interview, 1990.
113. Russell B. Porter, “Charge Exploiting of African Natives,” New York Times, 28 August 1928, 25:1. Though Johnson retreated slightly in the face of criticisms by procolonial apologists, one of whom, Belgian M.P. Louis Pierard, was quoted as saying that nobody “except childish Bolsheviki” would advocate withdrawal from the colonies, by and large he stood his ground. Further evidence is his elegiac “Lincoln’s Views on Equality Praised: Dr. Johnson Says Leader Assumed All People Deserved Equal Consideration,” New York Times, 4 February 1929, 26:6. Here Johnson brings to mind Bishop Montgomery Brown’s Communism and Christianism.
114. Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (New York: Grove Press, 1
984), passim. For an illuminating profile of Ford see New York Amsterdam News, 28 February 1934.
115. See “Communists Name Foster and Ford: 1,200 in Chicago Convention Cheer Old Leader and Negro Running Mate,” New York Times, 29 May 1932, 2:1; and “Reds Hail Candidate for Vice Presidency: 200 at Coney Island Give 10-Minute Ovation to Negro Nominee of Communists,” New York Times, 10 July 1932, 11:1.
116. “Bonus Stragglers ‘Mopped Up’ by Troops: 36 Reds Seized; Grand Jury Inquiry On; Hoover Denounces Attempt at Mob Rule,” New York Times, 30 July 1932, 1:8.
117. Naison, Communists in Harlem, 293. The progression from YMCA to radicalism was not at all unusual. For midthirties examples of YMCA ideological resistance to pro-Sovietism, see, e.g., E. T. Colton, The XYZ of Communism (New York: Macmillan, 1931) and his Four Patterns of Revolution (New York: Association Press, 1935). B. Russell, J. Dewey, M. Cohen, S. Hook, and S. Eddy, The Meaning of Marx: A Symposium (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1934).
118. Ras Makonnen: Pan Africanism from Within, as Recorded and Edited by Kenneth King (Nairobi, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 50.
119. Xuma to Yergan, 4 June 1928; Yergan to Xuma; Xuma to Yergan, 7 June 1928. The letter broaching the marriage question is Xuma to Yergan, 27 July 1928, Max Yergan Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University (MSRC/HU).
120. Yergan to Xuma, 10 June 1930, Max Yergan Papers, MSRC/HU.
121. Yergan to Dr. and Mrs. Xuma, 22 February 1932, ABX 32 0222, A. B. Xuma Papers, Box A (1918–1933), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
122. Yergan to Xuma, 18 June 1935, ABX 350618 (Race Relations), A. B. Xuma Papers, Box B (1934–1939), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
123. Yergan to Xuma, 18 June 1935.
124. Yergan to Xuma, 1 October 1935, ABX 351001a, Box A (1934–1937), A. B. Xuma Papers, Institute of Race Relations Collection, University of the Witwatersrand Library, Johannesburg.
125. Xuma to Yergan, 21 June 1935, Yergan Papers, MSRC/HU.
126. Yergan to Xuma, 22 April 1936, ABX 3604226, A. B. Xuma Papers, Box B (1934–1937), Institute of Race Relations Collection, University of the Witwatersrand Library, Johannesburg.
127. Yergan to Xuma, 7 May 1936, ABX 360507, A. B. Xuma Papers, Box B (1934–1937), Institute of Race Relations Collection, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
128. Telephone interview, Phyllis Ntantala Jordan, 20 May 1974. This ethnic attribution may well be apocryphal, as it describes a social type, even a stereotype, symbolizing the perception of a “typical” White female communist sympathizer in interwar-era South Africa (and, to some extent, the United States as well). Neugebauer is actually a Prussian name (often preceded by the courtly von); Frieda’s sister wed Anglo-Afrikaner G. Lindsay, whose mother claimed Voortrekker descent. “Three Generations,” Rand Daily Mail, 29 May 1947, 5. The matriarch gave Du Plessis as her maiden name. Given the deeply rooted anti-Semitism and pervasive stigmatization of interfaith marriages characteristic of this time and place, it is debatable whether such a union would have been tolerated, and, therefore, whether the statement was factually accurate. In fact, Neugebauer was a Gentile.
129. Personal communication, Donald Guy Sidney M’Timkulu, Ph.D., 29 March 1994.
130. Nancy Dick to author, 23 October 1990.
131. Robert Edgar, notes from interview with Mrs. Edgar Thamae, Sea Point, Maseru, Lesotho, 22 May 1985; phone interview, Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan, 20 May 1975, Madison, Wisconsin.
132. It is rather surprising that references to Neugebauer do not appear in Ruby Pagano’s unpublished biography of Max Yergan, although Neugebauer’s presence may be deduced by reading between the lines. The perception of scandal remained well after Yergan became a noted member of the American Left. Interview, Louise Thompson Patterson, 11 November 1988, Oakland, California.
133. The public awareness that the Yergan marriage was in trouble during their final years at Fort Hare was more or less general. Although this was undoubtedly exacerbated by the political stress placed upon their relationship by life in South Africa, other forces were evident as well. Quarrels were noticed by those with whom they interacted socially.
134. Davis to Yergan, 31 January 1936, National Negro Congress Papers, Correspond., “XYZ,” reel 8, Schomburg Library.
135. Yergan to Slack, 6 March 1936, Box 67, File South Africa 1936, YMCA Historical Library.
136. Yergan to Slack, 6 March 1936.
137. Confidential: Bull to Slack, 5 June 1936, YMCA Archives.
138. Yergan, “The Communist Threat in Africa,” in Charles Grove Haines, ed., Africa Today (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955), 263–64.
139. Personal communication, Nancy Dick to Anthony, 23 October 1990.
140. T. Mkhwanazi, “How Mbeki Turned from a Schoolboy’s Rage to Marxism,” (Johannesburg) Weekly Mail, 13–19 November 1987; R. Edgar, Mbeki interview, August 1990; C. Bundy, Learning from Robben Island (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991), introduction, xi–xii.
141. Gilliam, Paul Robeson, All-American (Washington, D.C.: New Republic Book Co., 1976), 89.
142. Yergan to Bunche, 29 April 1936. Courtesy of Charles P. Henry.
143. E. Mofutsanyana to Yergan, 1936, Max Yergan Papers, MSRC/HU.
144. Eslanda Goode Robeson, African Journey (New York: John Day, 1945), 47.
145. “Why Max Yergan Left South Africa,” Imvo Zabantsundu, 17 April 1937.
146. “Why Max Yergan Left South Africa.”
147. African Heroes and Heroines, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, l939, l944), 208.
148. Ralph Bunche, Field Notes in a Visit to South Africa, 1937, Bunche Papers, UCLA Library, Special Collections.
149. Tabata to Anthony, personal communication, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1976.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 5
1. Yergan to Pickett, 1936, American Friends Service Committee Archives, Philadelphia.
2. On the Joint Committee see John P. Davis, “What Price National Recovery,” Crisis 40 (December 1933): 271–72; reprinted in Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States from the Beginning of the New Deal to the End of the Second World War (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1974), 49–55. In this era African-Americans often used “National” to mean “Negro.” Responding to segregation, examples were National Medical Association and National Tennis Association.
3. “The National Negro Congress, the Call,” in Black Protest, ed. Joanne Grant (New York: 1968). Aptheker (present at its founding and active in the group throughout its existence) introduces the NNC, Aptheker, A Documentary History, 211–35.
4. William Scott, Lecture, “Afro-American Responses to the Italo-Ethiopian War,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, 9 October 1972. Mussolini’s invasion so incited tensions between African-American and Italian-American communities that 1935 Harlem “had become an armed camp.” William Scott, The Sons of Sheba’s Race: African-Americans in the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935– 1941 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
5. James W. Ford, “Political Highlights of the National Negro Congress,” Communist 15:5 (May 1936): 458. The Communist gave major space to the NNC. See its April, May, and June 1936 issues, and that of June 1940.
6. Ford, “Political Highlights,” 457.
7. John Davis to Yergan, 31 January 1936, Folder XYZ, National Negro Congress Papers, Box 8, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
8. Ford, “Political Highlights,” 460–61. Yergan began by stating, I have spent the past 15 years in Africa, traveling and working in all parts of the continent. However, I will speak today mainly of Ethiopia. Through the attack on this small country we are becoming aware of the aggressive nature of Fascism, and of the necessity for an intelligent, organized resistance. This thing called Fascism is the outgrowth of a larger force—imperialism. Imperialism has reached such a point that it controls much of finance capitalism.
9. Herbert Newton, �
��The National Negro Congress, USA,” Negro Worker (London?), May–June 1936.
10. Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (New York: Grove Press, 1984), 293. The phrase was Abner Berry’s.
11. He was also noted by historian and former CP leader Herbert Aptheker. Interview, 16 September 1988.
12. “Excerpts from Speech of Max Yergan, Capetown, South Africa, Secretary, South African Work of International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association, Saturday, February 15, 1936,” in Proceedings of the National Negro Congress, Washington, D.C. (NNC, 1936).
13. Chatwood Hall, “Why Max Yergan Left South Africa,” Imvo Zabantsundu (King Williams Town), 17 April 1937; “Dr. Max Yergan on South Africa’s Native Policy,” Bantu World (Johannesburg), 8 May 1937; Smith subsequently penned Black Man in Red Russia: A Memoir (Chicago: Johnson, 1964).
14. “Africa in Need of Basic Change, Yergan Says, Returning to Post,” New York Amsterdam News, 7 March 1936.
15. “Africa in Need of Basic Change.”
16. Yergan to Bunche, 29 April 1936. Copy courtesy of Charles Henry.
17. Xuma to Yergan, 27 November 1937, Xuma Papers, ABX 361127c, South African Institute of Race Relations Collection, University of Witwatersrand Library, Johannesburg (SAIRR/UW).
18. Xuma to Yergan, 27 November 1937.
19. Yergan to Xuma, 25 January 1937, ABX 370125, SAIRR/UW.
20. Yergan to “My Dear Friend,” 25 February 1937, File “B,” Box 68, YMCA Headquarters Library.
21. Yergan to “Dear Friend.”
22. Yergan to “Dear Friend.”
23. Yergan to “Dear Friend.”
24. Yergan to Xuma, 4 February 1937, Xuma Papers.
25. Xuma to Yergan, 5 March 1937, Xuma Papers, ABX 370305e, SAIRR/UW.
26. Xuma to Yergan, 5 March 1937, University of Witwatersrand.
27. Yergan to Xuma, 10 March 1937, Xuma Papers, Hoover Institution.
28. Yergan to Bunche, 9 March 1937, Bunche Papers, Box 180, Folder—Yergan/Additional Data, UCLA.
29. Yergan to Bunche, 17 March 1937, Box 180, Bunche Papers, Folder—Yergan/Additional Data, UCLA.
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