While white mourners eulogized Martin Luther king Jr. inside Memorial Church following his assassination, Black students stood outside to symbolize their alienation from the white institution they called Harvard.

That day in 1968, a year before the historic takeover of University Hall, a group called the Association of African and African-American Students (AAAAS) issued its "Four Requests on Fair Harvard."

The main demand of the group, the forerunner of the Black Students' Association, was a call for the establishment of an Afro-American studies program.

At Harvard and throughout the nation, Blacks stood on the threshold of full integration. Having won gains in the political and social areas, Black students at Harvard were crusading to clinch the last gain, to have an Afro-Am program of their own. Former students say this struggle for academic recognition parallels Black people's national quest for complete integration.

And today, other minority students at Harvard are making the same demands. This time they are proposing the establishment of an ethnic studies program, the acceptance of which may complete "the last unresolved business of diversifying the University."

Full Citizenship

"In the late 1960s Blacks saw themselves as being just about to enter intofull American citizenship," says Dean of StudentsArchie C. Epps III. "And they wanted to get therefaster and faster."

Epps, one of Harvard's first Blackadministrators, describes the atmosphere on campusin the last two years of the 1960s as"revolutionary."

"The student culture that was dominant then wasone of a counterculture," Epps says. "Activistswere questioning authority and calling forupheaval; but their endless list of critiques wasdirected not only towards the University buttowards society as well."

The University responded to AAAAS's demand byconvening a committee. In a published report, thecommittee, chaired by then-Professor of EconomicsHenry Rosovsky, recommended the establishment of asocial and cultural center for Black students, anintensified recruitment effort for Blackprofessors and graduate students, and thedevelopment of a standing committee on jointdegrees in Afro-American Studies.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)immediately established a search committee to finda leader for the new program. And for the firsttime, the University invited threeundergraduates--all Black--to act as full votingmembers of the six-person committee: Ernest J.Wilson III '70, Robert L. Hall '69 and Craig M.Watson '72.

While some administrators and faculty memberscalled the student participation a watershed inHarvard history, student activists claimed theUniversity was still slow to give the new academicdiscipline the recognition it deserved.

According to McLean Professor of Ancient andModern History, Emeritus Franklin L. Ford, Harvarddepartments historically begin ininterdisciplinary committee form and only yearslater become autonomous departments with their ownfaculty. But students wanted that right away, Fordsays. And they wouldn't wait.

"We knew we couldn't trust the administrationand we knew that we had to take that opportunityto push for what we really wanted," Hall says.

"The formation of the department was nothingbut a formal recognition of what the Rosovskycommittee had already promised us" Hall adds. "Wejust wanted that status formally noted by theUniversity."

But Ford, who was the dean of the faculty in1969, recalls that he and other faculty memberssaw departmentalization of Afro-Am as a big leapfrom its proposed program status--and they wereskeptical about a hasty construction.