Roxbury Meeting Erupts Violently Over Race Issue

Roxbury leaders blasted Harvard and the entire white establishment Wednesday night in a tumultuous South-End meeting of community people and representatives of the Harvard School of Education.

The meeting's focus was a panel discussion between Mark Shedd, Superintendent of Schools in Philadelphia, David Deeley, New York City's liason man with the Office of Education, Edythe Gaines, the only Negro District Superintendent in New York City, and Robert Anderson, professor of Education, in a panel discussion.

Bryant Rollins, a community organizer for the Urban League, set the tone of the evening when he asked members of the audience to stand and give their names. "We want to know who the enemy is," he said.

Chilling Note

The meeting aimed at an easy dialogue on the issues of community participation in building and controlling schools. But the discussion soon ran the gamut of black-white problems, and ended on a chilling note of misunderstanding and hostility.

One woman rose and told the crowd: "You made 'Negro' 400 years ago, and you don't know what to do with it now. And you can take it back to Harvard!"

Anderson bore the brunt of the community attack for his leadership of Operation Schoolhouse, a Boston-contracted Harvard project to design fourteen new Boston schools.

Though Anderson's task force has consulted similar community meetings about the design of new schools, the group insisted two nights ago that only paid black participation on the task force would constitute genuine community participation.

John Young, head of Boston CORE, demanded to know why Anderson hadn't hired black consultants at the outset. Anderson retorted that his contract per- mitted only "professionals" to serve as planners. Young angrily questioned Anderson's definition of "professional."

Paul Parks, recently appointed Model Cities Administrator for Boston, said Anderson and other professionals trying to work with the community were "lock-stepping with a system that has failed" ghetto residents.

The central concept behind the community protests was community development: the need to permit untrained black people to plan their own lives, and in that way acquire the experience necessary for getting better jobs.

Shedd, Seeley, and Mrs. Gaines are Ed School alumni in Boston for a meeting of the Ed school alumni organization