A group of about 20 Boston-area black alumni met in Cambridge Saturday and called upon the University to establish a Third World Cultural Center. President Bok has already rejected a similar proposal submitted to him in April by the financially beleaguered Afro-American Cultural Center.

The alumni group also discussed the controversial W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research, but took no formal stand on the issue.

Very Well Known'

In a statement released after Saturday's meeting, the group said it would become "a formal on-going body."

"We will make our presence very well known in the future," the group's statement continued.

The group's spokesman said the meeting was provoked by ill-feeling about the University's handling of minority-related issues. "If there wasn't any ill-feeling," he said, "we wouldn't have gotten together."

The spokesman for the black alumni group also said the group will announce its position on the DuBois Institute after subsequent meetings. "People seemed to lean toward the prospectus" for the research center written in 1969 by the Faculty's Standing Committee to Develop the Afro-American Studies Department, he said.

A major conflict developed during the past spring between supporters of the Institute design offered by the 1969 prospectus and the administration, whose plan for the research institute was developed this year by Bok's advisory committee.