Students Planning New Civil Rights Committee

Several organizations on campus are considering formation of a Harvard Civil Rights Committee to coordinate the study and protest of local racial discrimination and lend support to the student integration movement in the South.

An immediate project of the Committee, which is still in the planning stages, will be a drive to raise money for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Atlanta, chief coordinating unit of southern student action. SNCC is currently involved in a test program of voter registration in McComb, Miss., a rural area in the southern part of the state.

Fifty students from local colleges yesterday expressed support for fund drives on their campuses. They attended a meeting of the Boston division of the Northern Student Movement Coordinating Committee (NSMCC).

When established, the Harvard Committee will work with NSMCC, which is one of many groups throughout the country participating in the drive. The project, under the overall sponsorship of the National Student Association, is called the Southern Student Freedom Fund.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Liberal Union last Monday received permission from the Student Council to run the fund drive, and has since decided to seek the cooperation of other organizations interested in civil rights, according to Richard J. Rothstein '63, chairman of the HRLU's Civil Rights Committee, who attended the NSMCC meeting.

Combined Support for Drive

In addition to the HRLU, the Harvard-Radcliffe Young Democrats, the Student Christian Movement, the Friends Service Committee, and individual graduate and undergraduate students have already indicated support for the fund drive, Rothstein said.

Methods of raising money now being discussed include the sale of buttons indicating support for the civil rights movement, folk sings, and speaker programs. Definite plans will be announced as soon as the Committee is formally established.

Projects Planned

Tentative long range projects for the group include: 1. Study of local problems of discrimination in housing, employment, educational opportunities and slum development. A House seminar on this topic is one possibility. 2. Action in the form of economic boycotts, picketing, sit-ins, and exposure of discriminatory practices. 3. Support for the student movement in the South and spread of information about the situation there through speakers such as William Higgs, Mississippi lawyer, who spoke here last week.

In addition to plans for the fund drive, ideas on campus programming were discussed at the NSMCC meeting yesterday. The group also heard talks on the present state of the integration movement by three students involved in sit-ins, and now working to organize the fund drive.

Timothy Jenkins and Marian Wright, students at Yale Law School, and Thomas Hayden, one of two northern students beaten up while working with SNCC in McComb two weeks ago, addressed the group.