April 20, 1974

Professor Ewart Guinier, founding chairman in 1969 of Harvard University’s department of Afro-American studies, gave the Angela Davis Lecture on “Survival in the Seventies: Some Social Science Perspectives.” As a freshman at Harvard in 1929 and the only black student, Guinier was barred from residence halls, denied financial aid because no photograph accompanied his application and spoken to in the two years before he transferred to the City College of New York by only one person.

At the time of his death in 1990 Dr. Guinier—a lawyer and trade unionist before coming back to Harvard—was called by the eminent African-American historian P. Sterling Stuckey, “a source of inspiration for black intellectuals across the nation.”

The New York Times

The Angela Davis lectures were sponsored by the Urban Center for Black Studies of Vassar College.