Minister Delivers Speech On the Illness of Society

A self-described "country preacher" came to Harvard last night to discuss America's sickness-and to urge his audience to try to cure it.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's "Operation Breadbasket," which provides food to poor families, said, "It is easy to say that there is no cure, that the cancer is too far gone.

"But our lives would not be independent of that death," he said. "Those who do not choose suicide as the alternative to genocide must stand up."

Jackson delivered this year's Atherton Lecture, endowed by a grant for lectures "on a moral subject," to an audience that jammed the Eliot House Dining Hall.

Jackson warned the crowd not to feel self-righteous in their attempts to avoid cooperation with the system. "You are born reared and living in the system," he said. "When you ride in a G. M. [General Motors] car you participate in the system.

"Some naturals are covering processed minds," he said. "Those who say 'black is beautiful' must also know that black is struggling." he added.

Jackson said that when he was once asked whether he is a Marxist his answer was "No, I am a black Christian who read the Bible" and who could not be-

lieve that God left the world under-supplied with food.

"The problem is not overpopulation; the problem is underdistribution." he said. "Don't fight pollution when you need to be fighting the polluters," he added.

"It is not a mean nation that we are trapped in, it is a sick one," he said.

Harvard came in for special criticism. "Its real justification for existence is to be a threat to ignorance," Jackson said, but he noted that Harvard also includes "creative investments in South Africa."

But he said he is not particularly worried that Harvard students are getting their education's here: "Castro learned what he learned in the educational system controlled by Batista."

Jackson peppered his talk with Biblical references, and at several points there were choruses of amens from the audience.

"I hope I ain't in conflict with Mr. Atherton's intentions tonight, biess his soul," Jackson said.

Earlier in his two-day Boston stay. Jackson met with Roxbury leaders and with Harvard blacks "on the problems peculiar to us."