Reddick to Examine Activism As Black Movement Surfaces

About 15 black students are currently forming what they say will be a broadly based political organization called the Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association.

The association will replace Afro, a previous black student group which is no longer active.

Anthony Chase '77, the originator of the project and the association's first chairman, said yesterday the new organization is designed to "utilize the talents and energies of black students and articulate a black point of view."

"Afro has disintegrated and there is a need for a vehicle for black political activity," Rhonda Williams '78, another organizer for the student group said yesterday.

The association will be open to the entire black community at Harvard, although a membership fee will be required, Chase said.

Both Williams and Chase said they have approached over 100 students about the project and response has been positive.

The urgency of the Boston school desegregation issue and recent unhappiness with the University's Afro-American Studies Department policy have reawakened black student interest in such a group, Chase said.

He added that Afro had been weakened by a lack of student interest in the early 1970s, following the activist period of the late '60s when the organization was founded.

The group is planning a lecture series of prominent blacks, as well as symposia with Boston's black community, a tutoring program for minority high school students, work with the Boston Big Brother program, and a bi-weekly newsletter for next fall.

The project is an outgrowth of an attempt to reform Afro. Kenneth W. Vidato '77, president of Afro, is participating in the organization of the association.

Williams said that Afro had failed because of a lack of formal structure, and an inability to inform new students about its purpose.