Blacks, University Representatives Hold Informal Talks On Demands

Representatives of the Organization for Black Unity (OBU) and of the University-in what both sides called "informal talks" -yesterday discussed the OBU demands with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD).

But, Mark D. Smith '72, a member of Afro. said "The result was, as far as we can see, unproductive." Archibald Cox, an advisor to President Pusey and one of the University's delegates to the meeting, stated only that "we reviewed the situation with them."

OBU also announced yesterday plans for a mass rally on Sunday at Memorial Church, for which they are "asking for and expecting to receive support from many sectors of the black community." OBU has invited national black leader Floyd McKissick and Fanny Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to speak at the rally.

Ralph Abernathy, chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as well as national black leaders McKissick, Roy Innis, and Jessie Jackson have sent messages of support to OBU.

Yesterday afternoon's meeting at the MCAD headquarters on Tremont Street in Boston have no official significance. The Community Relations division of the MCAD a part of the executive branch of the state government served only as mediator between the three OBU delegates and the University representatives.

Smith, a spokesman for Afro. said "What happened at the meeting was absolutely nothing. The University did not move one inch."

Yesterday's discussions came after Phillip N. Lee, a third-year law student and spokesman for OBU had called Wednesday night for a meeting with Cox and L Gard Wiggins, administrative vice-president of the University. The meeting was scheduled for 2 p.m. yesterday to negotiate the OBU demands with mediators from MCAD. Wiggins did not attend yesterday's talks.

The two major points of controversy are OBU's influence on a 20 per cent minimum of non-white workers on all Harvard construction sites and the demand that painters' helpers be given equal pay with journeymen painters. The University has called the hiring demand discriminatory and out of proportion to the 9.3 per cent non-white population listed for Boston and Cambridge in the 1960 census.