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Too Few Black Workers in Yard

TO THE EDITORS

I'd like to draw your readers' attention to a matter of some importance to race relations at Harvard.

My work as a writer takes me almost daily into the Yard, where I am a regular user of the libraries. So, like everybody else who is here summer as well as winter, I have watched the systematic renovation of all the dormitories and a couple of the other buildings. I don't know how many millions the University has spent on this ambitious project, but I doubt that much of it has found its way into the pockets of the black citizens of Boston and Cambridge.

Having covered aspects of the civil rights "revolution" for three newspapers, I tend to notice presences and absences, such as how many black men or women are on a construction site. In the case of the Yard buildings, I think I could count on the fingers of my two hands the black workers I saw during the past four summers.

I didn't take a census. I just looked, and they weren't there. --Donald Hudson Pfarrer '56   Cambridge

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