Only 15 members of the Poor People's Campaign showed up to spend the night at Harvard last night. Some 400 had been expected, and 500 students here had offered to provide beds for them.

The 15 were on their way to Washington, D.C., from north of Boston. There was no explanation for the fact that such a small number arrived here.

Laurence Seidman '68, student coordinator of the campaign at Harvard, said in an interview last night, "The response of Harvard and Radcliffe students indicates that students will be ready to go to Washington in early June to engage in non-violent action."

Meanwhile, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, sponsor of the campaign, spoke at a $100-a-plate luncheon (chicken) in his honor at Northeastern University. After the luncheon there was a rally to kick off the Northeastern Caravan of the campaign at the Boston Common.

Abernathy said at the luncheon that the Poor People's Campaign will be the last attempt to deal nonviolently with the problems of poverty.

"If this nation fails" to respond to the campaign, Abernathy said, "we are in for a darker day than has ever occurred in the history of this country."

He called the first ten days of the campaign "the most fruitful and eventful" in the history of the civil rights movement.

Leave This Morning

Approximately 250 poor people will leave this morning by bus from the Blue Hill Christian Center bound for Providence, the group will hold rallies in New York, Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, and Baltimore before arriving in Washington on May 17.

Abernathy expects that fewer than 5000 poor people will stay in Washington for the entire campaign. He announced that "Resurrection City U.S.A." will be the name of the shanty town in Washington where the poor will stay.

"Contrary to newspaper reports," Abernathy said, the poor people will not remain in Washington after the campaign. They will stay "only as long as the SCLC stays there," he said.

Yesterday's luncheon raised over $15,000 for the campaign.