The publication of Michael Crowder's “Whose Dream Was It Anyway?” in January 1987 marked the opening of what promises to be a challenging era of revision and re-evaluation in African historiography. With the benefit of three decades of historical hindsight and armed with recently declassified colonial documentation, historians are beginning to grapple with the complexities of national struggle in late colonial society, beginning with Ghana's march to freedom in 1957. It is as a part of this process of revision and re-evaluation that the following examination of the Muslim Association Party [MAP] of the Gold Coast is offered. The MAP was a comparatively small organization which was and is easily overshadowed by the turbulence of mass nationalist politics in the years 1950 thru 1957. Yet its unique blend of religious, class, and ethnic appeals—appeals too often misunderstood or dismissed outright as vestiges of tribalism, traditionalism, or religious fanaticism—reveals much about the antinomies of nationalist struggle in the Gold Coast.

Political scientists concerned with the dynamic rise of Gold Coast nationalism in the decade after World War II (and those few historians who dared venture into the recent past) focused primarily on Kwame Nkrumah's Convention People's Party [CPP], its early split from the United Gold Coast Convention [UGCC] and its ultimate domination of nationalist politics from 1951 to 1957 (Apter, 1955; Austin, 1964; Bourret, 1960; Bretton, 1966; Fitch and Oppenheimer, 1968).

Max Yergan was one of the most controversial foreign-born leaders ever associated with modern South Africa. From 1921 to 1936 he was the only black representative of the North American branch of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) permitted to work in the South African field. Yergan's South African service radicalized the young missionary, culminating in his resignation from the YMCA in 1936. The next decade of Yergan's life was devoted to left-wing activism. In 1948 however, ostensibly disillusioned by the onset of the Cold War, Yergan abandoned leftist activism in favor of ultraconservativism.

South Africa loomed large in each of these transformations. This article is concerned with Yergan's shift from evangelical Protestantism to revolutionary socialism, highlighting the critical role that residence in South Africa played in his early political evolution. It also brings into focus the broader subject of Afro-American linkages with Black South Africans, making special reference to the advent and larger significance of Black American YMCA work among Africans.

Max Yergan was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1892, one of several sons of a literate black seamstress named Lizzie Yeargan. While much of his early life is obscure, he seems to have been influenced by the philosophical trends of African Redemption and Ethiopianism which swept many religious communities within the African Diaspora during the last quarter of the 19th century.

Female prostitution in Africa has attracted a few interesting studies since the 1970s (Bujra, 1975, 1977; White, 1980; 1983, 1989; Van Onselen, 1982; Van Heyningin, 1983). Hitherto the subject received casual mention or was at best treated as a minor aspect of broader social categories in studies dealing with African urban conditions (for example, Southall and Gutkind, 1956; Cohen, 1969; Little, 1973). However, even these recent studies concentrate primarily on two cases—Kenya and South Africa. This paper is intended to make a small contribution to the as yet limited knowledge of African prostitution by examining the growth and consequences of prostitution and its relationship to accumulation in the Upper Cross River Basin of Nigeria during the period 1930 to 1950.

Explanations of prostitution vary widely. In many societies the traditional attitude toward the subject, defined by religion and custom, is basically moralistic. Prostitutes are thus seen as deviants, or even criminals, who are unable to exercise control over base instincts. This is a simplistic and unhelpful view which, in the present state of knowledge about the complex phenomenon that prostitution actually is, can hardly stand even elementary analytical scrutiny. What is more, such an attitude tends to put the blame for prostitution squarely on the women without regard to the role of the men who encourage it.

The sale of sexual services thrives because there is a ready market for it. Even Victorian society with all its presumed modesty and “civilized values” had a soft underbelly as far as sexuality was concerned.

Even though reliable data are scarce, it appears that the continent of Africa has some of the highest mortality rates in the world. Estimates of crude death rates are of the order of seventeen per 1000 population, as compared to eleven for Asia and nine for Latin America (Kurian, 1984: 19). This study provides an analysis of the determinants of mortality in a part of Ethiopia, an area called Legeambo. While this area is small, it is similar in many important respects to other parts of rural Africa: the standard of living is low, access to sources of water for drinking, cooking, and bathing is difficult, and medical services are all but nonexistent. It is also similar to other areas in terms of its high rate of mortality. It differs from most other areas, however, in that a detailed survey of all households was undertaken recently. In consequence, a data base is available for this area, and it supports the analysis which follows, making possible a limited assessment of mortality experience. The first section describes the survey and the resultant data base. A multivariate analysis of the data is reported in the second section, and some concluding remarks and a comment on policy implications are provided in the third section.

The Fulbright Program, initiated in 1945, is one of the oldest U.S. overseas exchange programs. The overall goal of the program, since its inception, has been to increase mutual understanding among peoples through the living and working experiences of the scholars and students involved. In Africa the most important subsidiary goal is to strengthen African universities through provision of training and research opportunities for Africans and through the American Fulbright professors who work at those universities (Huff, 1986).

Of all the components of the program, the American Fulbright Senior Scholar, the key element in the program, has been an unstudied aspect. A mystique has surrounded the scholars selected for the program. It has been assumed that with purposeful selection of scholars and careful matching of overseas sites, program goals will be accomplished abroad and in the United States and that the appropriate motivational elements are in place to accomplish and sustain the changes made. Occasionally, the consequences abroad have been documented and evaluated, but little is known of the professional and personal effects of the Fulbright experience on the returned American Fulbrighter.

As an individual, the American Fulbrighter participates in an intensive experience, lengthy enough to produce potentially fundamental changes in the participant. Teaching and being involved in other academic duties overseas has generally been assumed to be a very positive experience. However, what evidence demonstrates the extent the goals of the program were accomplished with regard to the U.S. participant?