Students to Spend Vacation in Miss. Refurbishing Community Center

Eight Harvard and Radcliffe students will spend Spring vacation in Biloxi, Miss, refurbishing an integrated community center, James R. Blanning, sponsor of the group and a member of the United Ministry, announced last night.

The center, located in a poor white neighborhood near a Negro ghetto, is part of the United Church of Christ's Backbay Mission Project, which deals with both inter-city and racial problems.

During the day the students will paint and sand the center and at night they will attend seminars dealing with the political, social, and racial problems facing a southern city. In addition, the two Cliffies, Karen R. Groenfeldt '67 and Sally S. Seaver '67, will probably mend clothes and run a day camp.

"We decided to work with the Backbay Mission," Blanning said, "because it is an on-going project which offers an opportunity to do constructive work which we can plan in advance."

Blanning, who has participated in civil rights demonstrations in Maryland and Washington, D.C., returned to Cambridge last Thursday after participating in the March on Montgomery.

"From this experience in the South, I learned that the Klan is in direct contact with the police and is thereby able to keep track of all civil rights workers in the area," Blanning told the students at a meeting Friday. He added, however, that the Harvard delegation would probably be relatively safe since they would not be demonstrating.

The group plans to leave Thursday and to spend seven days in Biloxi, living in the church adjacent to the community center and eating meals prepared by the Cliffies.