Malcolm X Weekend Features Variety of Student Activities

Harvard and Radcliffe students commemorated the 15th anniversary of the death of black nationalist leader Malcolm X this weekend with a series of panel discussions, films and social, cultural and religious events sharing the theme, "Black Students: What We Must Do in the '80s."

Several hundred students and community residents attended the Third Annual Malcolm X Weekend activities, which began Friday evening at Hilles Library with a reception and a screening of the documentary "Malcolm X" and ended with a Sunday afternoon "Witness for Southern Africa" service at Memorial Church.

A Saturday night dinner for 350 featured speeches by Ephraim Isaacs, visiting fellow of Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton and the center of a discrimination suit involving the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard. and Junius Williams, an Institute of Politics fellow. The Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association (HRBSA), which sponsored the weekend, also that evening honored Ewart Guinier '33, professor of Afro-American Studies emeritus and former chairman of the department.

Panel discussions during the weekend included forums on "Race and Class in America" and "The Role of Black Women in Liberation Struggles." Multiracial audiences of between 50 and 100 people attended each of the sessions held in the Science Center.

The weekend events "showed what can happen when black students come together with a feeling of pride and unity," Eugene J. Green '80, president of HRBSA, said yesterday, adding, "Malcolm X talked about black pride and black unity at a time when other people were saying black people were less worthy to share in society."