Background
Yergan was born on July 19, 1892 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the son of Frederick Yergan, a construction worker, and Lizzie Yergan, a seamstress. Yergan's grandfather was a former slave.
(Who Are Achieving Distinction In Various Lines Of Endeavor.)
Who Are Achieving Distinction In Various Lines Of Endeavor.
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educator Missionary civil rights activist
Yergan was born on July 19, 1892 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the son of Frederick Yergan, a construction worker, and Lizzie Yergan, a seamstress. Yergan's grandfather was a former slave.
While attending St. Ambrose High School from 1907 to 1911, Yergan served on the Young Men's Christian Association's (YMCA) committee of arrangements and exhibited great motivation in his work, which led to his appointment as an official for the Shaw University YMCA chapter while he studied at Shaw, in North Carolina. Although his initial intention was to study law, his attendance at the YMCA Kings Mountain Conference, where the people and surroundings had inspired him, caused Yergan to alter his career path and dedicate his life to providing Christian service through the YMCA.
After graduating with honors in 1914, Yergan began graduate work at Springfield Training College, a YMCA institution in Springfield, Massachussets. Yergan completed one year of study and was then called into service by the YMCA International Committee to work with students in the Southwest. In 1916, Yergan attended an international convention of the YMCA in Cleveland, Ohio, where he heard a moving appeal from the national secretary for forty men to return to India with him to serve the troops. Yergan readily volunteered.
After spending several months in India, Yergan then organized YMCA units among African regiments under British Army supervision in Kenya. For two years Yergan remained in East Africa despite several bouts with African fever. While there, he served troops from different parts of Africa, India, and the West Indies. Because Yergan had worked so tirelessly during his tour, British officials contacted the YMCA offices in the United States requesting that they send other African American workers to the region.
Weakened by African fever, Yergan returned to the United States at the end of two years. He then canvassed various colleges around the country to raise money for the YMCA's work in Africa. During this time the United States Army called him to serve as a chaplain at Camp Lee, Virginia. From there, Yergan was dispatched by the YMCA Work Council to France. He worked among the segregated units of the American Expeditionary Force until World War I ended in 1918.
When Yergan returned to the United States, he visited various African-American colleges and churches in order to raise funds for the initiation of a YMCA chapter in South Africa. His tenacity led to the YMCA International Committee's authorization of a pilot program among the youth of South Africa, with Yergan as its first American mission worker.
In November 1921, after raising $10, 000, Yergan left for South Africa with his wife and their four-month-old son. For the next fifteen years, he worked in South Africa as a missionary and educator. He was credited with expanding the traditional missionary role beyond converting his flock to Christianity; he encouraged the young men with whom he worked to apply their faith practically by becoming teachers and leaders. To do this, Yergan visited school districts throughout South Africa, organized twenty-six associations among students, and launched interracial discussion groups in colleges to foster greater understanding among the native Africans, Coloreds, and white South Africans.
Upon Yergan's return to the United States in 1936, he was appointed to the chair in Negro history at City College in New York City. With this appointment, Yergan became the first professor of African-American studies on a major American college campus. During his tenure at City College, in the late 1930's, Yergan also acted as copublisher of The People's Voice, an African-American newspaper.
Eager to continue his work with Africa, Yergan organized the formation of the Council on African Affairs in 1937 "for the purposes of petition and protest; for educating the public about Africa; and, perhaps, for helping to spread the cooperative movement. " The council, with its ties to the Communist party in the United States and its pro-Soviet stance on foreign policy issues, became increasingly vulnerable to the Red-baiting of the McCarthy era. Yergan denied charges of Communist domination within his organization. But in October 1947, because of ideological discord among its directors, Yergan was expelled from the organization that he himself had created and headed for eleven years. Yergan also served as president of the National Negro Congress, which supported the war effort during World War II but simultaneously called for the self-determination of colonial peoples and removal of barriers preventing black participation in the war.
In 1946 Yergan led a delegation to petition the United Nations for the eradication of political, economic, and social discrimination in the United States. In 1962, Yergan became chairman of the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters, which opposed American support for UN military action against secessionist Katanga Province in the Congo. Although Yergan's political positions on African affairs were generally progressive and antiimperialist, in the early 1960's he made ambiguous statements in various publications regarding the South African apartheid government, which could have been interpreted as anti-Nationalist. In the 1960's, Yergan gradually retired by phasing out his numerous professional activities. He died following a lengthy illness in Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York.
(Who Are Achieving Distinction In Various Lines Of Endeavor.)
In 1920 Yergan married Susie Wiseman; they had four children. In 1945, Yergan was divorced from his first wife. He married Lena Halpern that same year; they had no children.