The W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research has received a $125,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to establish a lecture series on Afro-American life, history and culture.

Nathan I. Huggins, director of the Institute, said yesterday the series is the first major lectureship for "distinguishing those who have worked with Afro-American life."

The first of the five annual lectures will be William A. Lewis, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton, who was a 1979 Nobel laureate in Economics. He will launch the series in April with five talks on the economics of race relations in China, Africa and the United States.

Lecturers need not be Black, although they are the most likely candidates, Huggins said. "There are no restrictions, either in subject matter or field of achievement, although we would expect the person to lecture on whatever it is that makes them distinguished," he added.

Institute members will select the lectures, each of whom will receive $25,000, and Harvard University Press will publish the lectures.

During the semester when lecturers are giving speeches, they can live in Houses so that they will meet students, Huggins said.

The lectureship and Institute are named for the late sociologist William E. B. DuBois, a Black civil rights leader of the 20th century, who died in 1960 after joining the Communist party and renouncing his U.S. citizenship. DuBois earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895 and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909.