Max Yergan

by Anthony, David Henry, III;

  While in later years it became fashionable to disparage Yergan for imperiously flaunting the trappings of empire, those who do so should think back on what their own intellectual and sometimes literal foreparents did upon receiving Western educations. What did they wear? How did they comport themselves? How did they choose to communicate? How did they outfit their dwellings? Yergan did no more nor less than any “school person” would have aspired to do in that place and time. He wore fine clothes, he enjoyed his bourgeois entertainments, and, yes, he tried his best to live as well as a White man, for was this not the standard of that time?

  Yet deep down, perhaps in the recesses of his soul where no one else could go, there had to be some other sense of longing for kinship with the people of this land. He hints at this possibility in the occasional passage from his correspondence with Moorland, Tobias, and others, and it comes up in the “brotherly” banter he exchanged with Jabavu—or even stiff and stuffy Xuma. All struggled to find out how to be modern, Western, and African at the same time. Who perhaps more than the American Negro better personified these paradoxes? No wonder that Africa’s gift to America could become at once envied and scorned, and why, therefore, would not this cause the crassest confusion?

  But Yergan could stand up in front of White audiences and tell them that he too was Black, using a word he was instructed to despise in a continent called dark, among comrades several skin tones browner than his. He dared on many occasions to identify himself with his African compatriots, as when he wrote to Henry-Louis Henriod, “We Natives especially…” He and Jabavu could jest about “cullud” culture, could be loud and raucous and howl and guffaw and stamp their feet and backslap one another when in private as they were when on the road crossing the veld, camping out and debating for hours. They could be Nonwhite together, New Negroes but also ancient, authentic Africans.

  Somewhere down deep was this link that may have begun with his grandfather and that tied him not merely to brown folk back home but also to the Aggreys and those African students who passed in and out of Shaw, then to those Africans like Sol Plaatje who made their New World and diasporic sojourns, to Dube who lived in Brooklyn, to Xuma who made his way from south to north, to the leading lights who founded the Native National Congress, many with North American and specifically Negro experience, to the Semes, and to so many others then and afterward. So why not speak of oneself in the same breath as every other “Native”? How could he represent his brethren if he did not at some level try to make common cause with them?

  By the close of 1928 these influences led Yergan to compose a monograph, Africa, the West, and Christianity, prepared for distribution to the meeting of the General Committee of the World Student Christian Federation in Mysore, India, in November. In this, his first time back to India since the world war, he spent over a month on the road. While we do not know his precise trajectory at that time, there are indications of where Max went. There is almost no question, however, of what Yergan thought going into the conference, as his extended work amply revealed. It was truly the culmination of the growth he had undergone during the 1920s, in South Africa, in Europe, and, finally, upon returning home during the period of his furlough. It foretold a new course for the next decade, the main themes of which were now laid out before his readers. In no sense was it possible to view him exclusively within the framework of either the Student Christian Association, the YMCA, South Africa, or the United States. Yergan was now firmly establishing himself as a world citizen in the Black Atlantic.

  At the same time, Yergan had also been exposed to a wider world in which race, while still critical, no longer was the only major challenge that mattered to him. In his time and location it was inescapable, but it also articulated with other factors, most prominently class. This was something that had been on his mind for many years. It had been crucial in his own development as an educated professional. It was fundamental to the Du Boisian notion of the “Talented Tenth” who saw as their charge the “uplift” of their racial fellows, and for those working as missionaries in foreign lands where they fought “heathen ignorance.” In each instance he had local allies in the “school people” who helped him succeed in South Africa—the Jabavus, Dubes, and others who welcomed him as part of their metaphorical extended family. As he faced the end of his sixth year of service these variables would coalesce in new, unforeseen ways, giving Yergan a fresh awareness of himself and his world.

  His travels had dramatic consequences, internally and externally, in his life and mission. A hint of what lay ahead for Max came in a June letter to Mary White Ovington written on his return to South Africa from Jerusalem. Recovering from the flu, Yergan reentered South Africa in the wake of a drought broken briefly by fairly heavy March rains but followed by more drought, leaving cattle and people without water. On his mind were two other matters, the political scene and an upcoming South African missionary conference scheduled for the next week. Of the former Max wrote,

  You have doubtless learned that the Government has decided not to proceed with the proposed Native legislation which it had introduced in Parliament here this year. I am not yet able to say why this step was taken but I am inclined to think that it is due to the tremendous protest made in this country as well as in Europe and America against such patently inadequate and unfair legislation. I have reference to the segregation, franchise and land bills which have been before the Parliament of the country. I have not yet been able to gather up the threads of political developments but it does seem apparent that the Government realizes more than it did two years ago a sense of responsibility towards the temporarily defenceless and largely voiceless Natives of the country.69

  On the same day Max wrote Ovington, Thomas Jesse Jones wrote Anson Phelps Stokes. Citing C. T. Loram, Jones claimed that Yergan’s request for funds to help Fort Hare students was unnecessary in view of lavish bursaries available to them from Basutoland, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Transkeian Territories General Council. Jones argued that “the drought has hit many Natives hard but not those who would send their sons and daughters to Fort Hare. What is needed much more than bursaries to Fort Hare students is money to give the hungry Native school children at least 2 decent meals a day.”70

  The conclave Yergan wrote Ovington about was the SCA General Conference held July 5– 9 on the theme of “Which Way Is Youth Headed?” In a summary of the meeting Max described four impressions that it made upon him. First was the vitality of youth itself, which he described as “religious, enthusiastic, idealistic, courageous and hopeful.” Second, he found the conference itself to be courageous, both individually and in terms of the participants’ public expressions of willingness to apply Christian principles to social questions, notably that of race. Next, the meeting was one where hope was evident. Last, it was challenging.71

  Ovington’s response to Yergan’s lengthy June missive was an interesting one. In reply to his description of the land, its people, and their problems, she played an old tune. Responding to a reference Max made to African labor leader Clements Kadalie, she sighed,

  How I wish I could talk to you about the Labor Movement and the Missionary and the Y.M.C.A. I think the Y.M.C.A. is at its best in its local work. I mean the direct work in the field such as you do. Here in New York we don’t think very highly of National Headquarters. They are too political for one thing. Why do they need so many highly salaried men? Sometimes I hope that there will be as big shake-up here which will result in more power to the workers who are really in the field.72

  Within days of Ovington’s answer, Yergan was en route to India, for the WSCF General Committee’s Mysore meeting, taking an offprint called Africa, the West, and Christianity.

  4

  South Africa, Part II

  The Road to Radicalization

  Max Yergan’s public identification with radical left politics surfaced around 1931. Until then he balanced three sets of interests: one local (his overseas-based South African YMCA mission work); one transatla
ntic (lingering concern for North America); and one increasingly inter-nationalist, shaped by the YMCA, SCA, and WSCF. Christian and secular “witness” aided the transformation, as did trips to Europe, Asia, and North America. These brought new friends and renewed old ties with Black YMCA allies J. E. Moorland, C. H. Tobias, and John Hope. Together they faced a hopeful new era.

  More conservative Christian colleagues found Yergan’s growing leftism sudden and surprising. In fact, however, it was a deliberate transformation performed by a man with global interests, movements, and contacts after a decade of observing, researching, and discussing the theoretical and practical requirements of a changing age. All of these factors coalesced at a time and in a way common for the era within his cohort, progressive churchgoers. Change finally came when Max urgently needed a fundamental intellectual and spiritual breakthrough.

  Yergan’s new course crystallized during 1927, while he was on his two-year U.S furlough. In January 1928, on a tour in Cleveland, he made a stopover there en route to a Student Volunteer Movement convention in Detroit. He attended the National Alpha Phi Alpha Convention, spoke at the Cedar Y, preached at Mt. Zion Congregational Church, and was interviewed by a local YMCA paper, the Cleveland Red Triangle. “The mind of the European is slowly awakening to the magnitude of the African situation,” he told the reporter, then added,

  Wealth is pouring into that vast territory, and the world is turning there for the products which Africa yields. This has created a startling economic and social problem. By force of circumstances, the natives find themselves living in a civilization which is basically European. They are daily faced with the necessity of adapting themselves to the standards which surround them.1

  Yergan stressed the salutary effects of YMCA work in the difficult South African field:

  The Young Men’s Christian Association has been responsible for bringing the claim[s] of the natives before the white inhabitants. Our work has been principally among students, who will be the leaders of the next generation. Where formerly we met suspicion and opposition, the doors are now open to us everywhere. More and more the whites are taking up a serious study of the interracial problem which confronts them.2

  On February 15, secretary Yergan told of “The New Africa” at a mass meeting at Northeastern University (the YMCA College), where he was a guest lecturer sponsored by the Sigma Delta Epsilon honor society. The campus newspaper welcomed Max’s appearance and address, praising his oratorical skill and eloquent, restrained message.3 The reporter noted that he had “emphasized the purpose of African leaders today as raising up additional leaders of character and zeal by modern educational methods.”

  Mr. Yergan won the decided favor and interest of his large audience because of his fair and broad-minded treatment of the problem. Throughout the address, he maintained an admirable dignity and high level of approach; never did he resort to petty prejudices and undue racial consciousness.4

  Evidently equally moving in Yergan’s appeal was his timely reference to a recent cable from Professor Jabavu at Fort Hare detailing the enormity of a drought in the Eastern Cape. Jabavu wrote,

  The drought this year beats all known records[,] exceeding even the previous worst, that of 1861, for since January (1927) it has not been wet enough for a plough to enter the soil! Folks have missed out two ploughing seasons, the June and the November, and the sun is that hot that we seem to be living inside a stove or oven day after day! Therefore I cannot hope to be able to raise any funds locally.5

  Northeastern then launched a schoolwide Max Yergan Fund campaign aimed at its five thousand students.6

  As Max returned to Fort Hare, following the International Missionary Council’s April 1928 Jerusalem meeting, the South African Communist Party was rethinking its strategy toward millions of Nonwhite workers. That year the Communist International had changed its general line to call for a “Black Belt Republic” in the American South and a “Native Republic” of workers and peasants in South Africa, both seen as consistent with the principle of self-determination. This controversial new emphasis spurred recruitment of Africans in South Africa and “Negroes” in the United States.

  Its membership and effectiveness peaking by the mid-1920s, the ICU was by 1928 plagued by external and internal difficulties that hampered its effectiveness. The Communist Party sought to fill the vacuum created by the union’s eclipse. Yergan noted the linkage between the South African and North American “Negro questions.” Connecting the two proved logical for a Black American with African experience pursuing a personal commitment to social change that was informed by a transatlantic diasporic sensibility.

  The late 1920s were marked by widespread interest in socialism. This was true globally, especially after the rise of Italian fascism, followed closely by German Nazism. In both the United States and the Union of South Africa, a vital question of the diverse working-class movement was where to locate racial oppression in the struggle against capital and the state. Socialist parties emerging in each of these milieux stumbled when facing the “Black question.” This became one of the greatest ideological tests for socialist revolutionaries. Comintern action forced the issue in both the African and American Communist Parties.

  These concerns were on the radical Christian agenda as well. After the Bolshevik revolution social gospelers strove to come to grips with the first socialist state. YMCA director John R. Mott had helped lead the Hoover Refugee Relief Commission after World War One. Edward Clark Carter (the “Ned” Carter who facilitated Max Yergan’s overseas postings in Bangalore and British East Africa), was by the late 1920s secretary of the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR). The IPR grew out of a Honolulu meeting organized in 1925 by YMCA alumni to foster better racial, cultural, and social understanding among North Americans and Asian-Pacific peoples.7 Already active in a collective originally called the National Conference on the Christian Way of Life (later, the Inquiry), Carter began his IPR tenure the next year. His self-ordained charge as IPR head included rapprochement with the USSR. He saw himself as an “honest broker,” as did Yergan in South Africa.

  Yergan’s communications with fellow Black YMCA veterans J. E. Moorland, C. H. Tobias, and John Hope revealed growing interest in communism and the USSR. Wondering whether revolution was necessary in South Africa, he considered whether socialist theory was compatible with Christian doctrine. After South Africa’s 1929 election and the global economic depression, he moved ever leftward. Back in May 1928, Max’s jottings home showed anger with Union government actions, as he wrote, “There is a sense in which there is always a crisis here. I do not say this for rhetorical or any other effect; it is true because of the very nature of a situation created by a vast complex of factors and forces sometimes uncontrolled, often in conflict, always active.”8 He then went on to detail the social, political, economic, and spiritual challenges with which the citizenry grappled.

  By mid-1928 Yergan’s view of Africa generally and South Africa in particular had changed greatly. His talks with people of divergent backgrounds permitted him to explore the new world that Africa and Africans had forged between the world wars. These he presented in preacherly prose, in language still showing his religious calling. More and more, he opened with invocations ritualistically debunking the myth of African heathen ignorance, which he himself had previously accepted, as in the following passage:

  Please put out of your mind most of your previously acquired pictures of Africa if they represent only wild beasts, savages, the witch doctor and other aspects of “darkest Africa.” Witch doctors, superstition, ignorance and cruelty we have, and sometimes in abundance, but along with this aspect of African life there is another equally as engaging and much more difficult to deal with. The true picture that you must have of Southern Africa must include mines, railways, work shops, highly commercialized agriculture and many other aspects of modern life as you know it.

  With this fresh view of Africa came a novel vision of the Africans themselves, who
m Yergan portrayed as sentient, self-actualized, resilient human beings able to take upon their shoulders the burdens of bettering their own living, working and social conditions through education, religious training, and progressive labor combinations. In his annual brief to his stateside colleagues, Yergan commented on a stirring example of this new spirit, that of a nascent secular, working-class consciousness in Africa:

  The most interesting and significant development in the life of the African worker has been what is called the “I.C.U.,” the Industrial and Commercial Union. This is a sort of inclusive trades union which has been developed to a remarkable degree by an African of Nyasaland, Mr. Clements Kadalie. In spite of many difficulties, he has achieved something worth while and his work marks the beginning of organization among African workers. I do not agree with all of his methods, and I certainly do not countenance all of his utterances but I do give him credit for having dared and partly succeeded in a field of great need and opportunity.

  His rediscovery and embrace of the ICU leader provides a key to Yergan as well. That year Kadalie had made a potent enough impact upon him to warrant his hosting the controversial unionist at a major missionary forum, much to the chagrin of some of Yergan’s “European” colleagues. Acquainted with Kadalie since at least 1923, when, as Kadalie’s honored guest, Yergan addressed an ICU public meeting, the secretary of the “Bantu” section of the Student Christian Movement now reciprocated by issuing an invitation of his own, news of which he trumpeted in June 1928 to Mary White Ovington:

  Just now I am busy in preparation for a South African Missionary Conference which is to be held next week. This gathering will be watched by the country in general for its programme is certainly a departure from all previous gatherings of this nature. We are going to devote our whole time to a discussion of the full range of Native life. You may be interested in knowing that Mr. Kadalie who is the efficient leader of a Native Labour Movement called the I.C.U. is to be one of the speakers at this gathering. I mention this because there was a very strong protest on the part of some missionaries and church leaders against appearing on the same platform with this man? [sic] I think it is a distinct advance to have made it possible for missionaries and church people to be exposed to the point of view of this very significant Movement which Mr. Kadalie is leading.9