For their first event as an officially recognized group on Harvard’s campus, the Association of African and Afro-American Students at Harvard and Radcliffe decided to invite Black novelist James Baldwin to speak at the institution in January of 1964. This came after almost a year of disagreements with the university administration over the membership clause of the cultural organization, which had originally stated that the right to be a member was only given to students of African descent. The administration deemed this to be discriminatory and refused to give the group access to university buildings and facilities until the membership clause was changed to be more inclusive of different racial identities. After heavy negotiations, the group and its president, Martin Anochie ‘64, decided to open membership to all races but change to an invitation-only format as an act of rebellion against the administration and to maintain all-Black membership.

At the time, James Baldwin was most commonly known for texts such as Notes of a Native Son (1955), The Fire Next Time (1963) and Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), among other intellectual work in which he frequently discussed Blackness and radical politics. The AAAAS invited him to give a lecture on “the Cultural Implications of the Negro Revolt,” which was, in and of itself, an act of “negro revolt” by inviting a Black radical writer to speak on radical politics at a white institution and charging members of “civil rights organizations” (students of color) half the price of unaffiliated (white) students while also still managing to escape the rules and not invite non-black students into the group. This was one of many, albeit more subtle, examples of Black students at Harvard and Radcliffe making and taking space for themselves when it wasn’t readily available for them.