While complete statistics are not available for years prior to 1970, Dines says his class of '58 contained 10 Blacks and Jones says the class of '50 had only four or five Blacks.
Most of the classes which entered in the late 80s have contained about 130 Black students.
Still, Fitzsimmons says efforts to attract minority students of all ethnic backgrounds--including an undergraduate recruitment program which sends minority students to targeted high schools around the country--have been largely successful.
In January, the admissions office reported that 45 of 714 students accepted early this year are Black--an unusually high number and an increase from last year's 28.
Still, the problem has not been admitting a high number of Black students, but rather getting them to accept the offers. Only 54.7 percent of admitted Black students chose to matriculate in the Class of 1996. Fitzsimmons said earlier this week that the number of Black applicants has increased dramatically this year.
Both Fitzsimmons and Epps say the low yield is partially caused by large scholarship and financial and packages offered by other schools.
But students say that campus racial tensions, especially of the kind manifested last spring, also play a part in keeping potential students away. They also say that classes with fewer Black students, such as the Class of 1996, perpetuate the problem.
"We can't endure too many more classes like the Class of 1996," says Alvin I Bragg '95, BSA vice president. "Harvard does not realize that by strengthening the Black community it strengthens the community as a whole."
A Black students at Harvard struggle to cobble together a community, student faculty committees on race relations commissioned by Epps are meeting to develop a comprehensive plan to improve race relations at Harvard.
But while the committees will probably draft reports and outline long-term goals, student leaders say the answer is simple: broadening and increasing the dialogue about race relations. They say only through greater understanding of the differences between Blacks and whites will the fault lines in the community disappear.
"As a student. I sometimes think that I shouldn't have to be concerned with these things that make feel like I'm hitting my head against the wall, wondering when things will ever change," says Reid. "But I am still an idealistic person. There are better things here and with greater dialogue, we can begin to deal seriously with these problems and try to overcome them."
Since the first Black student graduated from Harvard in 1870, resources for Afro American studies have increased and numerous organizations for Black students have been formed. Despite these advances, many Black students still complain of a subtle kind of racism that pervades the campus. As the University struggles with a dearth of Black faculty and a drop in the number of Black students in the first-year class, some students say they feel forced to act as...