The group's latter-day counterpart, the BSA, has occupied a larger place in campus politics. Last year, the BSA sponsored a lecture by controversial City University of New York professor Leonard Jeffries and distributed a flyer entitled "On the Harvard Plantation" listing grievances against The Crimson, the Harvard University. Police Department, the Law School and Peninsula.

"A house security guard deliberately ignored the cries of two Black Harvard-Radcliffe women who were being accosted by five naked, white boys yelling sexually explicit comments," read one of the grievances against the HUPD in the flyer. "One of the frightened victims was then falsely accused of possessing a knife and subsequently, frisked."

Critics of the BSA have said the group, by inviting controversial speakers to campus, has only inflamed race relations. But BSA leaders consistently maintain that criticism is unfair and that the group plays a positive role on campus.

"We do not feel welcome," said BSA President Zaheer R. Mi '94 in an interview earlier this month, "and then when they see us clumping together for support, they call us separatists."

But some Black alumni criticize the formation of groups like BSA, saying minority students may be better served by being forced to get by without race-based organizations.

"In some ways it's more difficult for the students there now." Jones says, "because the Blacks in some ways tend to isolate themselves." George A. Dines '58 expresses disapproval with Black students who "form their little cliques and don't really interact with other people." When he was a student, he says, "if you were going to do anything, you had to mix with everybody. You had no choice."

Students interviewed last week say that while they have chosen not to be involved with BSA, they still feel a part of the Black campus community. Some say they are not interested in the group's political goals, while others say they simply don't have the time.

Bryant says her affiliation with the Kuumba singers is sufficient to keep her in touch with her Black heritage. And Lance E. Gravely '94, the lone Black member of the Porcellian, traditionally considered the most exclusive final club, says he gained a "racial awareness" because of recent events like the Rodney King verdict, not from the BSA, of which he is not a member.

Some Black students say that while formal organizations maintain a high-profile on campus in advocating an improved atmosphere for Black students, they draw support primarily from other Black students.

Reid, who was Student Advisory Committee co-chair during a tumultuous spring, speaks of a "double consciousness" that she believes most Black students face, in which they must balance life in a predominantly white world with the after-hours support of primarily Black friends, with whom they have the most in common.

A disproportionate number of Black undergraduates live in the Radcliffe Quad compared to the river houses, members of the Committee on House Life have acknowledged.

"Many times I feel I am an ambassador of the Black race. In class discussion, when they talk about Black issues, the discussion seems to turn to me," Reid says. "It would be tiring to be an ambassador every day and then come home, eat dinner and be an ambassador again."

Black student leaders have expressed dissatisfaction with the number of Black undergraduates and faculty. In order for Black students to enjoy a sense of community, leaders say the number of Blacks at Harvard must increase.

In this year's first-year class, only 94 Blacks matriculated, representing the lowest Black enrollment since the Class of 1972, when affirmative action guidelines for admissions were first implemented.

The class admitted in 1969 was what Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons '67 calls "the first of the modern era." That year's 121 Black matriculating students nearly doubled the 63 students in the Class of 1972. Fitzsimmons attributes the dramatic jump to heavy recruiting prompted by "an institutional concern for the dearth of African-American students on this campus."