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Notes notes to chapter 1 1. Ruby Pagano, “Max Yergan, A Biography.” Unpublished manuscript. Copy in author’s possession, 1, 4. Pagano indicated that Yergan’s mother hung a portrait of this emperor. It is not easy to verify whether this is accurate, for two reasons. First, there seems not to have been a Roman Emperor named “Maximilian ,” although, to be sure, there were other rulers with names that seemed to bear a superficial resemblance to this, e.g., Aulus Maximian, r. 286–305 and 307–10; Maximinus, r. 235–38; or A. Maximus, r. 383–87. My thanks to Gary Miles for this insight. Secondly, an emperor who did go by the name “Maximilian ” was the Austrian ruler of Mexico, not a contemporary of Yergan but a figure well known during the lifetime of his grandfather, Frederick. I am grateful to David Sweet for bringing this to my attention. In fact, unless the enumerator erred in copying Yergan’s name, it appears that he might well have altered it himself, as he evidently did for his surname, which he seems to have simplified, while his mother Lizzie continued to spell it “Yeargan.” L. B. Yeargan to J. E. Moorland, 6 February 1917, courtesy Moorland Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University (MSRC/HU). 2. Yergan told Ralph Johnson Bunche during 1937 that his father had been “a prize s.o.b.” Bunche, Diary (unpublished), entry, 21 April 1937, Ralph Johnson Bunche Papers, UCLA. I owe this choice reference to Robert Edgar. For fuller descriptions of the Bunche-Yergan relationship, consult Robert R. Edgar , ed., An African-American in South Africa: The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche, 28 September 1937–1 January 1938 (Athens: Ohio University Press, and Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1992), and Brian Urquhart, Ralph Bunche: An American Life (1st ed., New York: Norton, 1993). Their interaction shall be examined in depth in succeeding pages. 3. Jonathan Daniels, A Southerner Discovers the South (New York: Macmillan , 1938), 3. 4. Daniels, A Southerner, 3–4. 5. Raleigh News and Observer, 20 July 1892, 1. 6. “He Got His Dues: A Camden County Fiend Hanged and Riddled: A 277 Negro Brute Who Makes a Horrible Assault Is Visited with Retribution,” Raleigh News and Observer, 4 October 1892. 7. Pagano, “Max Yergan,” 4. Attempts to contact the centenarian Delany sisters , who almost certainly knew Yergan, as they grew up in Black Raleigh during the same decade, proved unavailing. Through their publicity agent they communicated the sad news that they either would not or could not help in “any way, shape, form, or fashion.” Personal communication, 11 April 1994. 8. Of course, this may be a deceptively simple characterization of a far more complex reality, especially in view of how little is known about Yergan’s absentee father. Perhaps grandfather Fred sought to provide his grandson with a more acceptable father figure than the man who actually sired him, for reasons that only a family could know. On the Raleigh upbringing of the Delany sisters, see Sarah and A. Elizabeth Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First Hundred Years (Thorndike, Me.: G. K. Hall, and Kodansha International Publishing, 1993), 63 – 67, 70 – 77. Hubert Delany, younger brother of Sadie and Bessie and noted legal figure, became an associate of Yergan during their Harlem years. 9. Ralph W. Bullock, In Spite of Handicaps (New York: Association Press, 1927), 111. 10. Booker T. Washington, “Atlanta Exposition Address,” in William L. Andrews , ed., Up from Slavery (New York: Norton, 1996), 101–2. 11. John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790–1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943), 205–6. 12. Frenise A. Logan, The Negro in North Carolina, 1876–1894 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), 121. 13. A crucial element of this ideology, “Ethiopianism,” is discussed in Wilson J. Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 23–24. Moses defines the term thus: “Ethiopianism involved a cyclical view of history—the idea that the ascendancy of the White race was only temporary, and that the divine providence of history was working to elevate the African peoples.” For an earlier view from a White evangelical supporter of the idea of using Black missionaries to “uplift” Africa, see Rev. F. Freeman, Africa’s Redemption: The Salvation of Our Country (Fanshaw, N.Y.: 1852; reprinted Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press...

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