Historian Herbert Aptheker will open the fall lecture series of the John Reed Society tonight when he discusses the "Roots of the Negro Oppression" at 8 o'clock in Emerson D.

"An American Dillemma," a massive treatise on the Negro problem in the United States, by Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish sociologist, will be the focus of Aptheker's remarks.

In offering his own explanation of intolerance of the Negro people, Aptheker will make use of the Marxist theory of "Historical Materialism." He will subtitle his lecture, "Mrydal's Dilemna-Is It Real?"

A Guggenhein Fellow in 1946-1947, Aptheker has written two books and five pamphlets on the history of the American Negro, and is a contributor of many historical periodicals. At present he is instructing at the Jefferson School of Social Science in New York City.