47. Institute of Pacific Relations, “Testimony of Max Yergan,” 4606–7.
48. Jolis, A Clutch of Reds and Diamonds, 314. Jolis was evidently unaware of the Sino-Soviet dispute.
49. “Yergan Taking Anti-Communist Warning to Africans: Will Warn Natives of Red Poison,” Journal and Guide, 14 June 1952.
50. Personal communication, Robert Matji to Robert Edgar, April 1989; Edgar to Anthony, 21 April 1989. Matji claimed this may have had something to do with the mixed race backgrounds of these leading figures.
Half a century later Walter Sisulu recalled Yergan’s attempt at dissuading the Defiance Campaigners. Sisulu to Anthony, interview at the Walter and Albertina Sisulu home, Johannesburg (Gauteng), 2 July 2000.
51. “Phillips News” (Johannesburg), 10 August 1952, ABCFM Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Phillips, Yergan’s senior by three years, also preceded him in South Africa, arriving in 1917 after being appointed to the Zulu Mission and remaining on the Rand for some twenty years beyond Max’s departure.
52. Confidential, Richard I. Phillips, Acting American Consulate General, Kenya, “Subject: Visit of Dr. Max Yergan to Kenya, 28 August, 1952,” 032-Yergan, Dr Max/8-2852, State Department Archives, NARA.
53. Confidential, Phillips, “Visit of Max Yergan to Kenya.”
54. “South African Leaders Blast Yergan,” Freedom 2:10 (October 1952).
55. White to Nehru, 4 May 1953; White to Dulles, 6 May 1953, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress; Editorial, Baltimore Afro-American, 9 May 1953; “Time Running Out,” Freedom 3:5 (May 1953); Abner Berry, “A Brain Washed Yergan Fills Master’s Order,” Daily Worker, 12 May 1953.
56. Richard Lincoln, “Black South African Forced Back Home,” New York Amsterdam News, 23 May 1953.
57. Lincoln, “Black South African Forced Back Home.”
58. “An African Leader Exposes Max Yergan,” Freedom 3:6 (June 1953).
59. Cited and translated from the French in D. N. Gibbs, Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 121–22, 257n. 131.
60. Yergan, letter to the editor, New York Times, written 28 July, printed 3 August 1953. He later wrote a similar letter to the New York Herald Tribune on August 2. NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.
61. George Sokolsky, New York Journal American, 29 July 1953.
62. Walter F. White to George Sokolsky, New York Journal American, 31 July 1953, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress.
63. Yergan, letter to the editor, New York Times, written 18 August, published 19 August 1953.
64. “Yergan Intrigues in South Africa against Fighters of Jim Crow,” Daily Worker, 11 September 1953.
65. African Lodestar, November 1953 (ANC Transvaal Youth League Publication), Issued by W. M. Sisulu (Secretary-General, ANC of South Africa).
66. Interview, Walter M. Sisulu, Johannesburg, 4 July 2000.
67. “Finds World Curious About American Negroes,” Pittsburgh Courier, 19 June, 26 June, 3 July 1954.
68. New York Times obituary, 10 November 1954; Time magazine obituary, 22 November 1954.
69. More concerned with the conferees, Wright gave American policy short shrift. A relevant allusion was the following terse dismissal: “The United States, though not present, had its spokesmen for the policy of ‘containment of Communism.’ ” Since Yergan and Powell were among the diminutive number of American mouthpieces at Bandung, with himself and journalist Carl Rowan both being in quest of books, it appears his comment referred to one or perhaps both deft public speakers, Powell and Yergan. By contrast, Wright and Rowan tended to prefer the printed page. Richard Wright, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1956), 181.
70. “Why There’s No Colored Bloc; Interview with Max Yergan, American Negro Authority on Africa,” U.S. News and World Report, 3 June 1955, 96.
71. 032-Yergan, Max, Dr./12-2057 Despatch no. 236 from Salisbury, State Department Archives, NARA.
72. Russell Warren Howe and Sarah Hays Trott, The Power Peddlers (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 176. The best introduction to this subject remains Crawford Young, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965); for a contemporary “Onusian” (UNO) view, see Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1966). For an example of the work of the ACAKFF see Anthony Trawick Bouscaren, Tshombe (New York: Twin Circle, 1967).
73. Young, Politics in the Congo, 284–95.
74. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, 97. For fuller treatments of Lumumba, see Colin Legum, Congo Disaster (Baltimore: Penguin, 1961); Thomas Kanza, Conflict in the Congo: The Rise and Fall of Lumumba (Baltimore: Penguin, 1972). On American governmental reaction to Lumumba see John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: Norton, 1978); Henry F. Jackson, From the Congo to Soweto: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Africa since 1960 (New York: William Morrow, 1982); Madeleine G. Kalb, The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa—From Eisenhower to Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1982); and Richard D. Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). For two excellent revisitings of these subjects see Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (New York and London: Verso, 2001), and Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (London and New York: Zed Books, 2002).
75. Russell Warren Howe and Sarah Hays Trott, “Out of Whitest Africa,” chapter 4 in The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America’s Foreign Policy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 171.
76. Howe and Trott, The Power Peddlers, 172–73.
77. Confidential, H. S. V. Villard, Amembassy Dakar to SecState WASHDC, 10 February 1961, 032-Yergan, Max (Dr and Mrs)/2-136 1LLR, Declassified 13 February 1985, State Department Archives, NARA.
78. Confidential, H. S. V. Villard.
79. 3 March, Luanda to Secretary of State, no 109, Mar 1, 10 A.M. 032-Yergan, Max (Dr.)/3-161, State Department Archives, NARA.
80. Gibson, Luanda, Confidential Telegram, to Secretary of State, 221, 4 May 1961, 3 P.M., State Department Records, File 032-Yergan, Max (Dr.)/5-461, released 13 February 1985, State Department Archives, NARA.
81. 21/61, “Dakar reports American negro Dr Max Yergan may visit Luanda early March,” outgoing telegram American Consul Luanda, Rept Info: American Embassy Dakar (Pouch) 032-Yergan, Max (Dr.)/2-2761CS/CS, State Department Archives, NARA.
82. Afro-American, December 1961. Article and photo supplied courtesy of Afro-American archivist Mary Beth Prior.
83. Herbert Aptheker interview, 16 September 1988, 480 North First Street, San Jose, California.
84. American Embassy, Pretoria, Visit to South Africa of Dr. Max Yergan, 13 November 1964, State Department Archives.
85. Cited in AmEmb Pretoria, 3 December 1964 to Secretary of State, State Department Archives.
86. “All Right for Negro, Why Not Kaiser, Asks Paper,” Daily Dispatch, 25 November 1964. For further examples see “Transkei Paper Asks: Why Not Matanzima? Negro ‘White’ Hotel Guest,” Rand Daily Mail, 27 November 1964; “The Joke of the Year,” Daily Dispatch, 27 November 1964.
87. J. Anthony Lukas, “Negro Sociologist Praises South Africa’s Apartheid Policy,” New York Times, 30 November 1964.
88. American Embassy Pretoria Airgram A-66 Subject, Dr Max Yergan, American Negro Visitor, Comments on South African Race Policy, 3 December 1964, State Department Decimal File, NARA.
89. William H. Witt, First Secretary of the Embassy, Pretoria, to Secstate Washington, 3 December 1964, Subject: Dr. Max Yergan, American Negro Visitor, Comments on SA Race Policy Ref Embassy’s A-207, 13 November 1964, State Department Archives, NARA.
90. William L. Swing, American Vice Consul Airgram A-66, 8 December 1964, AmConsul Port Elizabeth to Department of State, Subject, Transkei Visit of Dr Max Yergan Causes Stir, Ref Embassy’s A-207, 13 November 1964, Yerg
an, Max, State Department Archives, NARA.
91. Confidential Outgoing Telegram AFE W. C. Kinsey to Department of State, 22 January 1966, Leg 7 Ashbrook Trv—Yergan, Max (Dr) 12248, Declassified 13 February 1985, State Department Archives, NARA.
92. Interview, William A. Rusher, University Club, San Francisco, 9 December 1996.
93. Secret, Incoming Telegram, Department of State, Leg 7 Ashbrook, 25 January 1966, Declassified 13 February 1985, State Department Archives, NARA.
94. For the president’s night reading from: Bill Moyers, 8 March 1966, enclosure: Rick Haynes, the White House, Memorandum for Bromley K. Smith, 7 March 1966 (cc. R. W. Komer), White House Central Files, Name File, “American A,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
95. Yergan to Bill Rusher, 7 January, 19 October 1970, William Rusher Papers, Library of Congress.
96. Rusher to Yergan, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1 March, and Yergan to Rusher, 15 March 1971, Rusher Papers, Library of Congress.
97. Obituary, New York Times, 23 March 1971: 23 March Susie Wiseman Yergan lies in repose, George L. Jones Funeral Home, 455 Lenox Avenue, NYC. At 11 A.M. Wednesday, the 24th of March, 1971, she was funeralized, at St. James Presbyterian Church, 141 St. & St. Nicholas Avenue. It is unknown if Max attended.
98. Howe and Trott, The Power Peddlers, 202–3.
99. New York Times obituary of Lena Halpern Yergan, 17 April 1972.
100. Yergan to Rusher and B. B. Connell to Rusher, 1 May 1972; Yergan to Rusher, 9 May 1972, Rusher Papers, Library of Congress.
101. Martin Bauml Duberman, personal communication. See also Paul Robe-son, a Biography (New York: Ballantine, 1989).
Bibliography
Note on Sources
Researching the life of Max Yergan resembles reconstructing African history. In spite of a documentary plethora, there is a paucity of prima facie evidence. Though he left a rich record, scores of silences, some deliberate, others mere happenstance, persist, perhaps permanently. Materials available concerning various aspects of the professional life of Max Yergan, if surprisingly abundant, do present special problems. They are extremely widely spread out and are as likely to be encountered in Europe and Africa as in North America. For a long time the greatest question mark was what lay in the uncatalogued files of the indefinitely restricted, fifty-year-rule-ridden Max Yergan papers collection at Howard University. I saw these for a day and a half in April 2002.
Of source materials at the disposal of researchers, a good place to start is at the YMCA of the USA Archives at the University of Minnesota. This archive represents a reorganization of documents previously housed at the former YMCA Bowne Historical Library in Manhattan. Before the latter was reconfigured during the late seventies, the author utilized this hoary collection in its raw form, throughout the summer of 1975. Data was then filed in thousands of folders laid in hundreds of boxes. Since that time, though most original documents have been microfilmed, institutional policy shifts have, on occasion, redirected parts of what I once experienced as a user-friendly sequencing of documents, with most of the documents being retained in St. Paul, many being sent to Chicago, and still others being redeployed back to prior YMCA branch offices, presumably for local use. These now form the YMCA of the USA Archives under the kind custodianship and philanthropic largesse of the generous Kautz family.
Second in importance stand several key manuscript collections filed within the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center of Howard University, especially the papers of Howard luminaries Jesse Edward Moorland and Edward Franklin Frazier. Yergan correspondence is to be found among the Paul and Eslanda Goode Robeson collections, and it seems likely that “Yergania” may also be found in the Mordecai Johnson files when these are catalogued and opened to the public within the near future.
Next are several letters, reports, and circulars amassed during the course of Yergan’s service term in the World’s Student Christian Federation, a body organically affiliated with the YMCA. These two symbiotically related institutions were akin to interlocking directorates. The WSCF was also linked to the Student Christian Movement (also Student Christian Association) and the World Alliance of YMCAs. Hence, documents dealing with one will often lead to others. Thus, even when originals are misplaced, copies sometimes surface in sister institution repositories. There are two major WSCF libraries, the WSCF archives in Geneva, Switzerland, affiliated with the World Council of Churches, and the one compiled by John Raleigh Mott, late North American YMCA director, out of his correspondence, housed in the Mott Room of the Divinity School Library of Yale University. Researchers wishing to make maximal use of these facilities, though, are well advised to first familiarize themselves with the extensive official literature on the YMCA, WSCF, and SCM before doing so.
Sporadic, evanescent traces of Yergania are interspersed among the official correspondence of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Phelps-Stokes Funds, although these files are not always accessible to the public and occasionally become inaccessible even to bona fide researchers. The writer managed to gain limited access to them after persistent prodding and much collegial aid, particularly in the latter two cases. Fortunately, however, the Rockefeller Archive Center proved much more forthcoming, and for the same reasons as hold true for YMCA and sibling agencies, one foundation’s files typically lead to another’s.
South Africa is also a logical source for much of the documentary evidence about Yergan’s tenure between 1922 and 1936, but documents here seem few and far between. Many of Yergan’s closest colleagues and most intimate friends during these decades transacted great parts of their professional and private business with him in person, leaving little in the way of a paper trail. This is both consistent with his style of work and politically prudent. We have no idea if data has been destroyed, either by him or by his correspondents, on one hand, or “lost” by the authorities, on the other.
Microfilmed editions of papers from institutions with which Yergan became closely involved include the National Negro Congress Papers and the People’s Voice, a tabloid newspaper in which Yergan had a financial interest. Yergan also contributed columns to the Daily Worker and often was the subject of articles within both the establishment and Negro press. Particularly intriguing are a series of “live” radio broadcasts, evidently lost, made intermittently in the thirties and forties, locally, nationally, and internationally (at least one aired from Toronto, Ontario, on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). All of these are described in written materials but have not resurfaced in aural form.
The final repository is that set of documents generated through domestic surveillance in this country, and made available via FOIA, i.e., Freedom of Information Act, requests. This data is of highly uneven quality, and must, without exception, be treated with caution and extreme circumspection. The data being redolent with innuendo and character assassination, one is hard pressed to assess the veracity of allegations advanced within them by persons unknown, often with questionable motives. Even so, these materials cannot be dismissed out of hand; indeed, the very scale of intelligence gathering directed at Yergan would seem to have been extraordinarily thorough, for, in addition to eliciting information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, i.e., the Justice Department, FOIA requests have also elicited material from the Departments of State, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and Customs and Immigration. True to form, Central Intelligence Agency respondents professed an inability to locate data on Yergan; it is clear from cross-referencing papers of supporting agencies, as well as perusing the work of colleagues, however, that this was not quite the case. However, since contesting the CIA’s claim would require litigation, I deemed it unwise to press the matter.
In addition to these documents, another FBI file was loaned me by a colleague, Harvey Klehr, who was researching related questions concerning the National Negro Congress. At one time, Yergan’s relationship to this group appeared to have been largely peripheral, since there are indications that the presidency was conceived primarily as a symb
olic office, at least initially, responsibility for most NNC decisions lying within the secretariat. From 1936 to 1943, then, the true “power behind the throne” ostensibly was John Davis, the national secretary, rather than President Yergan. Nevertheless, this distinction was not deemed significant enough to disabuse the FBI of the notion that Yergan’s activities were possibly subversive. This collection is at once more voluminou and less enlightening than Yergan’s personal file, although it does help in charting the course of the organization. The FBI’s NNC and Yergan files both share Hoover’s lurid preoccupation with the public record, as most intelligence sources used in constructing the NNC file originated in accounts in newspapers, while Yergan’s personal dossier was arranged via data drawn from scores of shadowy confidential informants, infiltrators, and wiretap logs. In the matter of the paid informants, only rarely might one identify them from the tenor and context of their remarks. For the most part, unmasking informants is a virtual impossibility. Hence, corroboration of their often gross allegations is similarly difficult.
Max Yergan: A Collection of Primary and Secondary Sources
This list constitutes a cumulative bibliography on the life and work of Max Yergan. It includes almost all of the articles, lectures, public presentations, and correspondence either by or concerning him. Since this book was written over a long period of time, many of the materials I had consulted at different stages of the project were moved around from one archive to another. Consequently, readers who wish to locate these sources should be guided by date rather than file and/or box number.
Part 1: Primary Data Held in Archives and Repositories
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:
Franz Boas Collection. Letters exchanged between Boas and Yergan.
Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library:
Harold Jackman Correspondence. Cullen-Jackman MS Collection. Three mimeographed fliers advertising events of International Committee on African Affairs, and its successor, the Council on African Affairs dated 20 November 1939, 9 May 1944, and 12 November 1945.
Max Yergan Page 41
