Chinese war refugees in South Carolina

Walter Yeh and his family in Columbia, SC in 1956
From Richland Library

The hiring of white faculty and especially the enrollment of a white student at Allen University attracted the public's attention. Unnoticed was that Allen also hired its first Asian professors in 1954, the year it broke with its tradition of maintaining an all-Black faculty.

The professors hired were music professor Walter Huai-deh Yeh and sociology professor Ju-Shu Pan. Their hiring was part of a general effort by Allen University president Higgins and AME bishop Reid to improve academics and integrate the university, and generally help the university adapt to the changes that were expected to follow the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education court decision.

For Drs. Yeh and Pan, their arrival in Columbia, South Carolina marked the end of a long path to escape political turmoil in China. Both had been born in the early 1910s. They had been college students in China during the 1930s, but their studies were disrupted by the war with Japan.

Pan was born in Zhejiang province, and he attended Tsing Hua National University in Beijing. He received an A.B. degree in 1937. This was timely as war broke out that year, and Beijing was captured by Japanese military forces in June. It is unclear what Dr. Pan did immediately after graduating, but he left China in 1944. He was able to secure passage on an army transport, and he landed in San Pedro, California on July 1, 1944. He moved to Chicago and enrolled as a graduate student.  

Walter Yeh in 1958
From the Allen University yearbook via Richland Library

Yeh also moved to the United States in 1944. He was born in Shanghai. For college, he pursued a B.A degree from St. John's University in Shanghai and then studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. St. John's University was a liberal arts college founded by American missionaries. It was known for offering superior academics, and the school maintained close relations with American universities. These experiences provided Yeh with familiarity with American culture, which would prove important when he moved to the U.S. 

Yeh graduated from the music conservatory in 1935. It is unclear what he did for the next five years, but in 1940, he was hired as a music professor at the conservatory. His studies took place at an incredibly difficult time as the city of Shanghai was a war zone. Japanese military forces tried to take control of the city in 1932. After encountering resistance from Chinese forces, they agreed to a cease fire, but fighting broke out again in 1937. Large parts of the city were destroyed, and the Chinese military was driven out. For the remainder of the war, until 1945, Shanghai was under Japanese occupation.

The exact date of his departure was not recorded, but he likely left in late 1943. Yeh's path to the United States was circuitous. He flew over the Himalayan mountains to Calcutta, India and then took a ship to Melbourne, Australia and then finally arrived in Los Angeles, California on February 8, 1912. In his arrival documents, Dr. Yeh wrote that he was traveling to Ann Arbor, likely to work or teach at the University of Michigan. However, he ended traveling further east and enrolled at the Eastman School of Music at University of Rochester, receiving an M.A. and a Mus. M. (in music theory) in 1945. He then studied at Harvard University and received an A.M. degree in 1948. He was awarded a Ph.D. by Rochester the next year. His dissertation was "The Chinese Symphony, with male chanters, solo baritone and solo soprano." He received the highest score (219 ell) of all graduating student, in fact all graduating students for several years.

After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Yeh moved to Alaska to work at Sheldon Johnson Junior College. He only remained there a year, returning to Boston in August 1950. From 1951 to 1954, he worked as a researcher at Harvard. He left that position to move to South Carolina and hold a joint appointment at Benedict College and Allen University.

Ju-Shu Pan in 1958
From the Allen University yearbook via Richland Library

Dr. Pan also moved to Columbia in 1954. He was hired as a professor of social science. He had completed his Ph.D. in sociology in 1946. He then remained at Chicago, working as a researcher. Pan studied the experiences of elderly people who moved into retirement homes. In addition to his dissertation "A Study of the Personal and Social Adjustment of Old People in Homes for the Aged," he published five articles in academic journals (American Sociological Review, The Journal of Educational Sociology, Geriatrics, and The Journal of Social Psychology). Pan's job at Allen was his first permanent one.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate any detailed accounts of how Pen and Yeh came to be hired. Edwin Hoffman said that he'd been hired directly by President Higgins and Bishop Reid, and both were very candid about the situation in South Carolina. He was told that, if hired, he would be among the first white professors at the university, and they only wanted to employ faculty who fully supported civil rights for Blacks. Presumably, they had similar conversations with Pen and Yeh, although both would have had limited experience with the political issues.

In Columbia, Pan and Yeh stood out. Not only were they among the first non-Black faculty at Allen, but they were among the first Chinese immigrants in the city. In 1950, only eleven people in the entire metropolitan area were non-white, non-Black. 

The Social Science Club in 1958. Dr. Pan is in the back row, second from the right. Dr. Hoffman is second from the left.
From the Allen University yearbook via Richland Library

Both Pan and Yeh appear to have appreciated the stability of their jobs in Columbia as they largely remained there for the rest of the careers. After his first year, Dr. Pan moved to Waco, Texas to serve as department chair at Paul Quinn College, but he returned to Allen the next year.

Dr. Pan lived in an Allen University apartment complex for faculty. This was one of the few (possibly the only) racially integrated residences in the state, and he was neighbors with Edwin Hoffman, John G. Rideout, and Forrest O. Wiggins. Dr. Yeh may have lived there as well for a year or two, but by 1957, he had purchased his own home located near the University of South Carolina (at 615 Henderson).

In their accounts of their time in South Carolina, neither Hoffman nor Davis mention Yeh or Pan, so presumably they didn't interact much. Newspapers regularly reported on musical performances that Dr. Yeh helped organized, but otherwise, the two attracted little notice. They were not mentioned at all during the public fight over the employment of Hoffman, Rideout, and Wiggins. 

Certainly, both had good reasons to avoid getting involved in politics. As members of South Carolina's tiny Chinese immigrant community, they could expect minimal support if they became political targets. Dr. Pan was especially vulnerable since he was a non-U.S. citizen and thus could face deportation. 

Moreover, nether seemed to be interested in the political issues. On a form submitted as part of an application for citizenship, one of Pan's former professors at the University of Chicago said that, not only was Pan not member of the communist party, but he in fact was anti-communist. Dr. Yeh appears to have been perceived as someone who would stay out of politics as President Veal made him made chairman of the humanities department in 1957, following the removal of Rideout from this position.

Both Drs. Pan and Yeh remained at Allen for the rest of their careers. Pan published a translation of the Chinese ethnography report, The Lolo of Liang Shan by Yueh-Hua Lin, in 1961. This was a notable accomplishment for professor at a small university that had only began to pursue research ambitious. Unfortunately, this was the last academic work he published as he died two years later of natural causes.

Dr. Yeh lived until 1990. In Columbia, he was a well-regarded member of the community who regularly participated in music performances. He amassed a large music collection. The collection was donated to the University of South Carolina after Yeh's death, and it is currently housed in the Music Library.