From the moment of his emergence in South African intellectual history, Harold Cressy was seen as a figure of great potential by his elder contemoraries such as Abdullah Abdurahman and Solomon T, Plaatje, among others. Given that he died at an early age of 27 from pneumonia in Kimbereley, Cressy never had the opportunity in realizing his full potentiality. Nevertheless, the extraordinary nature of his prescience is indicated by the very fact that by the time of his demise he had already realized certain achievements: he had already been a co-founder of the Teachers' League of South Africa (TLSA) with Dr. Abdurahman; had been a passionate exponent of the view that New African modernity had much to learn from New Negro modernity, especially in educational matters; had been one of the leading intellectuals within the African Peoples' Organization (A. P. O., the foremost political organisation of Coloureds in the first half of the twentieth-century); and had already contributed two very important essays to the A. P. O. newspaper in 1911. The year 1911 was important in Harold Cressy's biography not only because he graduated from University of Cape Town (then Cape University), there also appeared perhaps the first biographical sketch him, by a no lesser intellectual than Solomon T. Plaatje: "Harold Cressy, who was successful in passing the University examination for the B. A. degree, and to whom we extend our hearty congratulations, is the first recognised South African Coloured youth who has gained that distinction in South Africa" ("First Coloured B. A.", Tsala ea Batho [Friend of the Bechuana], February 18, 1911). Being a Kimbereley branch member of the APO, Plaatje identified very closely, more than any other African intellectual, with the political destiny of the Coloured people. This is testified to by the close relationship between Dr. Abdurahman and Plaatje. Exemplifying this close political relationship in concrete terms, Plaatje gave Harold Cressy an intellectual platform in his newspaper. The essay called attention to the importance of giving proper economic renumeration to the teaching profession: "Our schools require good, efficient teachers. But unless the conditions of pay are improved, it would be absurd to expect that they will be forthcoming.our gifted and clever young boys are rightly seeking their livelihood in other walks of life. No teacher who knows his work, and has a family to maintain, should receive a penny less than 100 [pounds] per annum. The teachers themselves cannot very well move in the matter. The teacher who grumbles and has the courage to ask for an increase stands the risk of instant dismissal. The leading Coloured men in each town ought to take the matter up, and in the interests of their children, insist on better pay for their teachers, and thus put an end to this iniquitous system of sweating" ("Sweating of our Coloured Teachers: Some Home Truths", Tsala ea Becoana [The Friend of the Bechuana], August 19, 1911). This essay and two others which appeared in A. P. O. ("Lecture: On the Rise of the American Negro as a Landholder", March 25, 1911; "Lecture: The Necessity of Education", July 29 and August 12, 1911) clearly spell out Harold Cressy's unswerving belief that education was the most easily accessible entry-way for the majority of Coloured and African people into modernity. Given the substantial reprints of articles by W. E. Du Bois ("The Souls of White Folk", October 8, 1910; "Marrying of Black Folk", Christmas Number, 1910) and Booker T. Washington ("The Negro and the 'Solid'South, February 12 and March 12, 1910; "Booker Washington's Advice", October 22, 1910; "Mr. Booker Washington On Race Problems", November 5, 1910; "A City of Negro Enterprise: Durham, North Carolina", June 3 and 17, 1911; "First International Congress on the Negro", June 1, 1912) in A. P. O., it is no wonder that both od them had a great impact on Harold Cressy. He seems to have had a much deeper affinity with Du Bois. Given that no articles by him have been found to exist between 1911, the year of his university graduation, and 1916, the year of his death, Harold Cressy seems to have in these four years fully preoccupied himself with the politics of education within TLSA. For him education and modernity were inseparable, as was the case with practically all the New African intellectuals. That Harold Cressy had a profound impact on a certain segment of avant-garde Coloured intellectuals can be seen in the following homage and memorialization in the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) newspaper summarizing a presentation called "The role of the Non-European teacher in our Society" by Dr. G. H. Gool, nearly thirty years after the death of the potentially great intellectual: "The late Harold Cressy was a pioneer in the fight against the wight of oppression. The government was trying to use the teachers to ingrain its race logic into the Non-Europeans, and it was to the teaching profession that it had turned to pick its group of Quislings to work the Juvenile Advisory Board as early as 1919. Mr. Cressy had opposed the anaemic stand of the teachers, who formed the old T. L. S. A. He deplored their belief that the function of their association was to interview the Administrator. . . . Unfortunately Mr. Cressy was alone in his attempt to oppose injustice consistently, and he could not carry the old encrusted Guard with him" ("The Non-European Teacher: Harold Cressy---Pioneer", The Torch, May 19, 1947). The legacy of Harold Cressy has continued up to the present. In 1953, 37 years after the death of Cressy, Cape Town Secondary School, a premier school for Coloureds and founded two years previously, was renamed the Harold Cressy High School. In 1990, on the Fourtieth Anniversary of the High School, a fomer alumnus who graduated in 1971 and presently a professor of History at the University of Cape Town, Mohamed Adhikari, wrote a 28-page lucid monograph on Harold Cressy: Against the Current: A Biography of Harold Cressy, 1889-1916 (Harold Cressy High School, Cape Town).