Black Author Turns Down Faculty Post

Black author and teacher Charles V. Hamilton has turned down a one-year post as visiting professor at the Law School for next year.

Hamilton--professor of Political Science at Chicago's Roosevelt University and co-author with Stokely Carmichael of Black Power: The Politics of Liberation--would have been the first black professor in Harvard Law School history.

In Chicago yesterday, Hamilton's wife said that his refusal was for "purely personal reasons." Hamilton could not be reached for comment.

At its April 17 meeting, the Law School Faculty voted unanimously to offer the Black Power theorist one year in the School's new Urban Studies chair, recently donated by the Ford Foundation.

Before Assassination

Hamilton's appointment was discussed as early as March when he spent two days in Cambridge as a guest of the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics. Acting Dean A. James Casner said yesterday that the School's Urban Affairs Committee formally recommended Hamilton several weeks ago, before the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4.

Before the recommendation went to the Faculty, Casner consulted with President Pusey and received the approval of the Ford Foundation that their chair could be used for a temporary, rather than a permanent, appointment.

No alternate appointment is being considered at the present time.