In his otherwise informative article, "In 1800s, Living Was Far from Gracious," (Feb. 5) Gaston De Los Reyes praises President A. Lawrence Lowell for democraticizing Harvard's undergraduate housing policies by building the river houses. Lowell, says Mr. De Los Reyes, was "committed to ending the social chasm of the `Gold Coast' and the College housing shortage."

Mr. De Los Reyes is unaware that President Lowell enacted a discriminatory housing policy in 1921. African-American students were prevented from living in Yard dormitories.

After a national protest organized by Roscoe Conkling Bruce, James Weldon Johnson, and other African American leaders, the policy, which also limited the number of Jewish students who could reside in the dorms, was overturned in 1923.

Mr. De Los Reyes probably checked out the wrong book from the Widener Library. Some of the most disgraceful chapters in the administrational history of Harvard are missing from official accounts. Thomas A. Underwood   Assistant Professor of Humanities & Rhetoric,   Boston University