DuBois's Widow Makes Appeal To Student Pan-Africanism

The widow of W.E.B. DuBois last night made an, appeal to a spirit of pan Africanism in American black students but did not specifically mention the institute at Harvard in her husband's name nor the controversy surrounding it.

"The arrogance of the white west that would separate us from our past is only as old as the west is old, and that is a mere moment of time, and a few centuries of registered history." Shirley Graham DuBois said last night.

DuBois, introduced as a guest of the Afro-American Studies department, spoke for about 50 minutes to a largely black audience of 250 in the Science Center.

Representatives of the black studies departments of Harvard, Brandeis, Northeastern, Tufts, Wellesley, and the University of Massachusetts at Boston organized the "consortium" on black studies last night.

DuBois, who returned last month to the United States after four years in Cario, Egypt, made frequent references to Africa as the black homeland. She called America "this alien land so different from the warm, fragrant, sun-drenched plains of Africa."

Only during questioning from the audience did DuBois refer to her husband, the black writer and sociologist, who died in 1963.

She did not comment at length on the state of black studies in the United States, beyond commanding black students to "keep the record straight: you are the scholars who must find and record the truth."

DuBois will be teaching writing as a visiting associate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst this spring. She is the author of 11 books, including several fictionalized biographies.

DuBois, who urged black students to study Arabic, warned of "a trend to anti-intellectualism that tends to crop up among our people."

Her speech was filled with the names of black and African leaders. In a brief verbal history of blacks in America, she lauded "the black women with prices on their heads who organized and ran the underground railroad who carried guns, don't forget that."

Heartless Thing

Ewart Guinier '33, chairman of the Afro-American Studies department, spoke before DuBois and labelled Harvard "a apparent criticism of the administration's plans for the W.E.B. DuBois Institute of Afro-American Research.

Guinier has frequently censured President Bok for attempting to establish the institute with no connection to the Afro-American Studies department.

The Kuumba singers also appeared performing three songs and two recitations.

A.B. Spellman, lecturer on Afro-American Studies, said the organizers debated whether to include entertainment in the program but concluded. "The black experience is never academic.

DuBois was subsequently introduced, and Steven H. Hobbs '75 presented her with a bouquet which be called "as symbol of God's beauty."

The two and a half hour presentation last night began what the Boston Area Black Studies Consortion called black history week 1975