The annual Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony at Cornell University will be awarded for the second time at a ceremony to be held Monday, May 6, at the A.D. White House at 4:30 p.m.

The Festival of Black Gospel, a 20-year-old campus organization dedicated to strengthening ties between Cornell and the community through an annual weekend of gospel music and worship, will receive the $5,000 award this year. Speaking at the ceremony will be Cornell President Hunter Rawlings; Trustee Thomas W. Jones, who established the prize in 1995; President Emeritus James A. Perkins, for whom the prize is named; and John L. Ford, the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students.

Accepting the Perkins Prize on behalf of the Festival of Black Gospel will be Roxanne Ryan '98, president; Yvonne Lomex, community liaison officer; and Cleveland Thornhill, adviser.

Two finalists for the prize will be given honorable mentions at the ceremony: Dr. Martin Harris, staff psychologist at Cornell's Gannett Health Center who has worked as an adviser to and mediator for Latino organizations on campus as well as individual students, and the Department of Theatre Arts, which last fall produced Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities to explore issues of racial tension. Kimberly L. Shute, interim director of campus and community relations, and Robert Mortis, director of audience services, will accept the award on behalf of the department.

Jones established the James A. Perkins Prize to promote efforts for the advancement of campus interracial understanding and harmony and to honor a past president's "historic decision" to increase the enrollment of minority students during the tumultuous 1960s. The annual award is intended to be presented to the student, faculty, staff or program making the most significant contribution to furthering the ideal of university community while respecting the values of racial diversity.

Prize money will be used to support activities that promote "interracial respect, understanding and harmony on campus," Jones said in announcing the award, adding, "President Perkins made the historic decision to increase very significantly the enrollment of African- American and other minority students at Cornell. He did so in the conviction that Cornell could serve the nation by nurturing the underutilized reservoir of human talent among minorities, and in the faith that the great American universities should and could lead the way in helping America to surmount the racial agony which was playing out in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. He made a courageous and wise decision and deserves recognition for it."

Perkins served as Cornell president from 1963 to 1969. Jones, who was an undergraduate at Cornell during a student takeover of Willard Straight Hall in 1969, is president and chief operating officer of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), the world's largest pension fund.

In remarks delivered during last year's ceremony, Jones said, "The Perkins Prize is intended to convey three messages: hope, celebration and recognition. Hope is acknowledging that America is a better society today than it was historically, and that if we persevere to achieve our highest ideals, America will be a better society in the future than it is today. Celebration is acknowledging the progress made in each generation since the first African slaves were brought to America 375 years ago....Recognition is acknowledging that enlightened individuals and institutions help us find the road to progress in each generation." The Perkins Prize grant is administered by Dean of Students John Ford. Winners are selected by a nine-member executive committee of the Student Community Fund, made up of students, faculty and administrators.