At this weekend's minority alumni reunion, Edward Dawson '81 remembered the time that President Derek C. Bok fled from student activists in a squad car. A discussion about the University's investments in South Africa had turned into an angry crowd, and Bok felt threatened. "Students were so vociferous," Dawson said.

Dawson also remembers "rallies, demonstrations and intense discussions with visitors." One night, students sat talking to General Motors representatives for "hours and hours" about the company's investment in South Africa, he said.

In 1989, the protests look different. When the Minority Students Association raised the issue of minority faculty hiring last year, they published a report. And at a recent Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association (BSA) rally, administrators greeted the ralliers and asked them to come back again soon.

Styles change. But several Black students at the alumni gathering said in interviews that the deeper problems facing minority students have changed little since their years at Harvard. Overt and covert racism and the dearth of minority faculty were and are the major problems faced by Black students, said members of the Classes of 1981-1987 who were in Cambridge this weekend. The difference, according to the alumni, is Black undergraduates' growing focus on these issues.

One example of Black students' new efforts is the minority reunion itself. In 1985, the BSA, the Association of Black Radcliffe Women and the Afro-American Cultural Center planned the first minority alumni weekend. It took nearly a year to plan, says Anne C. Bailey '86, one of the organizers, "but by the time the weekend rolled around there was a lot of administration support." The reunion is now held every other year.

This year's returnees attended speeches and panels on subjects like "The Resurgence of Racism on College Campuses," "Teaching our History," and "The Declining Presence of Black Males on Campus," all topics that have recently come into the news. But the issues the panels discussed were not new, graduates said.

"People perceive the problems to be different, but they aren't" said Steven Clark '81.

Some things have also changed for the worse. Several alumni expressed concern about the shrinking number of Harvard students from who come from lower-income Black families and attributed alterations in the Harvard Black community to this shift.

Although they attended Harvard during a span of 10 years, all of the returning alumni said they encountered racism in one form or another.

Kevin Henderson '83 talked about examples of overt racism. In 1980, the year he moved into Winthrop House, the Black population in the house doubled, he said. "They knew we were coming," he said, and in response some people put racist posters up in his room.

Around the same time, racial violence across the country increased. Although racial incidents at universities did not receive national attention until 1986, Henderson says the BSA served as a forum for discussing and reacting to racism that existed in the early 1980s as well.

On the Harvard campus, threats were made against the then-president of the BSA, Henderson said. And Bailey, who came to Harvard in 1982, says that by that time, most Black students had friends at other schools where there were also threats of violence.

Threats of violence were only the tip of the iceberg. The Crimson caused controversy in 1981 when it published an editorial about a prison riot in Arizona. Although none of the rioters were Black, a picture of two Black Harvard students with bars superimposed over their faces appeared next to the editorial, said Clark. When the students threatened to sue, The Crimson settled the matter by printing a retraction and agreeing to capitalize the word "Black."

Throughout the decade, Black students have also faced less explicit racism. They may find their credentials questioned, Clark said, by students who believe minority students are accepted to Harvard only because of their race. "They never question the athletes or the legacies," he said.

And those Black students who chose to study Black history and literature found that fellow students doubted both their competence and the legitimacy of the field.