Slave Game Prompts Suit

THE parents of an 11-year-old black student have sued his school district for using a computer game in class called ''Freedom!'' in which players take on the role of enslaved Southern blacks trying to escape. The case illustrates how racial sensitivities are confronting the high-tech world of software. Players start off as illiterate and are referred to as ''boy'' as they try to gain the educational skills necessary to head to the North, according to the federal lawsuit filed by George A. Vinson and Sonja Campbell-Vinson. The parents say their son, Brian, was humiliated by classmates while playing the game last September and that his civil rights were violated. The Aug. 17 lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from the district and Minnesota Educational Computing Corp., the software company that sold the game. A lawyer for the company refused comment about the case. ''Freedom!'' was deleted from school district computers last year and the software company pulled it off the market in 1993 and instructed schools to delete it from their computers. -