C. T. Loram: A South African Liberal in Race Relations

Abstract

C. T. Loram has been referred to as pioneer of race relation studies and famous expert on Native education, and is generally regarded as having been influential in race relations activities in South Africa, other areas of black Africa, and the United States.' In spite of his active involvement in race relations in South Africa in the 1920s and in the United States in the 1930s, he has remained a relatively obscure figure, yet his leadership in establishing the South African Institute of Race Relations and his organization of race relations conferences in America justify a closer examination of his work and attitudes. Hopefully, such a study will also help clarify the term liberal as applied to whites working in race relations between World Wars I and II. Born in Pietermaritzburg in 1879, Loram earned degrees at the University of the Cape of Good Hope, King's College, Cambridge, and Columbia University. His Columbia Ph.D. dissertation, The Education of the South African Native, helped to earn him his reputation as an expert on the education of nonwhites and as a result he became a member of both Phelps-Stokes Commissions investigating education in Africa. In this capacity he was described by Thomas Jesse Jones as leading authority on Native education.2 Jan Smuts appointed him a member of the South African Native Affairs Commission at its inception in 1920, and he also served as Chief Inspector of Native Education in Natal. In 1920 and 1921