On the evening of Sunday, February 9, 1992, a group of about 40 Black and Jewish students gathered for a tense discussion in a gray-carpeted, well-lit room in the Freshman Union.

Just a few days before, the Harvard Black Students Association had hosted a speech by City University of New York professor Leonard Jeffries, provoking a 400-student protest spearheaded by Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel.

The Union event was the only moment of organized talk in a year marked by silence and insult. The person who made it happen was at the time just a first-year student: Freshman Black Table President Alvin L. Bragg '95.

Some exchanges were sharp. Jews argued that Jeffries was anti-Semitic and inaccurate in some of his views. A Black student retorted, "If you feel that what Jeffries says is bullshit, then prove to me what he says is bullshit."

But as moderator, Bragg kept the session from escalating into a verbal brawl, diffusing tension by reminding participants that they were in an open forum, not an official meeting.

"It just amazed me the poise he had, the ability to maintain a lid on a room that could have blown up," says Michael H. Pine '95, a Hillel official and friend of Bragg's who was at the discussion.

The 1992 meeting was typical of Bragg, whom many students credit with a rare ability to reconcile diverse people and clashing views.

In his own term as president of the Black Students Association last year, Bragg was known as a mediator and, according to his predecessor, a "conciliator." It is not the usual role for the president of the BSA, which through the years has found that only controversial activism forced significant change from the Harvard administration.

Bragg is positioned to someday assume such a role on the larger stage of local or national politics. He has powerful mentors, including the Rev. Calvin O. Butts, pastor of Harlem's influential Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Bragg reconciles both strong roots in Harlem and an elite educational background at Harvard and New York's private Trinity School. His mother, Sadie C. Bragg, says he was raised to "know who he was and live in both worlds."

The Harvard senior himself says he will likely not end up running for office. But whatever he does eventually, today there is a definite sense of the anointed about him.

Says Dean of Students Archie C. Epps, who hasbeen watching Harvard political talent since thelate 1960s, "I would push him toward electivepolitics because he's the perfect example of acrossover politician who can draw votes from bothwhite and Black voters."

Striver's Row

On the wall in Bragg's newly bare Currier Housesingle, opposite the sleek super-bass, multiple-CDstereo, there is a detailed neighborhood map ofHarlem with notable sites marked.

Bragg grew up on a street of brownstones knownlocally as Striver's Row. The street, which wasfeatured in the movie "Jungle Fever," is ahistoric haven for upper-middle-class Blackprofessional households; Booker T. Washington IVis rumored to live there.

His parents, Sadie and Alvin Sr., were notnative New Yorkers. In fact, they met in eighthgrade in the 22,000-person town of Petersburg,Va., 22 miles southwest of Richmond.