Artists Will Talk To Blacks Only

Black performers in the Winthrop House Festival of the Arts may speak at meetings open only to blacks, but the meetings will not be held in Winthrop House and they will not be sponsored by the Festival Committee.

The Festival, which will be co-sponsored by Afro and Winthrop House in March, will feature only black artists. James Baldwin, Leroi Jones, Dizzie Gillespie, the Abysynnian Baptist Choir of Newark, N.J., and a street theatre group from New York have been invited, but none of them has accepted yet.

In announcing that the Festival would host speakers who might later attend meetings for blacks only--possibly including meetings sponsored by Harvard Afro--Master Bruce Chalmers said, "We can't expect to control what these people do in private after they have done what they were invited to do here."

The activities at the Festival will be open to the public, but the performances by Baldwin and Jones--if they come--will have audiences limited to about 250, with Winthrop residents having first option for tickets.