Vincent Harding

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Reverend
Vincent Harding
Born
Vincent Gordon Harding

(1931-07-25)July 25, 1931
New York City, New York, US
DiedMay 19, 2014(2014-05-19) (aged 82)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Occupations
  • Pastor
  • historian
  • activist
Notable work
MovementCivil rights movement
Spouses
  • Rosemarie Freeney
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1960; died 2004)​
  • Aljosie Aldrich Harding
Ecclesiastical career
ReligionChristianity (
Mennonite
)
Scholarly background
Alma mater
Doctoral advisorMartin E. Marty
Scholarly work
DisciplineHistory
Institutions

Vincent Gordon Harding (July 25, 1931 – May 19, 2014) was an

social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Martin Luther King Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River, Hope and History, and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, he served as co-chairperson of the social unity group Veterans of Hope Project and as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.[1] When Harding died on May 19, 2014, his daughter, Rachel Elizabeth Harding, publicly eulogized him on the Veterans of Hope Project website.[2]
 

Education

Harding was born on July 25, 1931, in

US Army from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 he received a Master of Arts degree in history at the University of Chicago. In 1965 he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in history from the University of Chicago, where he was advised by Martin E. Marty
.

Career

In 1960, Harding and his wife,

A Time to Break Silence", which King delivered on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly a year before he was assassinated.[6][7]

Harding taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Spelman College, Temple University, Swarthmore College, and Pendle Hill Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation. In the months after King's 1968 assassination, Harding worked with Coretta Scott King to set up the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, and served as its first director.[8] During those same months in 1968, he worked with a group of scholars to set up Atlanta's Institute of the Black World.[8] He also became senior academic consultant for the PBS television series Eyes on the Prize.

Harding served as chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project: A Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal, located at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. He taught at Iliff as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation from 1981 to 2004.

Beliefs and activism

Harding was a devout

Mennonite pastor.[10]

In January 2005, Harding remarked at the Christian

liberal arts university Goshen College
:

There's a lesson for us: If we lock up Martin Luther King, and make him unavailable for where we are now so we can keep ourselves comfortably distant from the realities he was trying to grapple with, we waste King. All of us are being called beyond those comfortable places where it's easy to be Christian. That's the key for the 21st century – to answer the voice within us, as it was within Martin, which says 'do something for somebody.' We can learn to play on locked pianos and to dream of worlds that do not yet exist.[9]

Writings

  • Chapter 1 Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship
  • African-American Christianity: Essays in History
  • Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero
  • Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement
  • We Must Keep Going: Martin Luther King and the Future of America
  • There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America
  • Foreword to Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, by Arthur C. Jones
  • We Changed the World: African Americans, 1945–1970 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans, V. 9)
  • A Certain Magnificence: Lyman Beecher and the Transformation of American Protestantism, 1775–1863 (Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion)
  • Introduction to How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney, Howard University Press, editor Gregory S. Kearse
  • Foreword to Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman (Beacon Press, 1996)
  • America Will Be! Conversations on Hope, Freedom, and Democracy with Daisaku Ikeda (Dialogue Path Press, 2013)
  • "L'espoir de la démocratie", by Vincent Harding and Daisaku Ikeda (In French), (L'Harmattan, 2017,
    ISBN 978-2-343-11268-8
    )
  • Introduction to Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (Beacon press, re-released 2010)

See also

References

  1. ^ "Vincent Harding". Archived from the original on June 25, 2013. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  2. ^ "Remembering Vincent Harding". Veterans of Hope. May 19, 2019. Retrieved August 29, 2019.
  3. ^ Johanna Shenk. Vincent Harding: ‘Don’t get weary though the way be long’ The Mennonite. Nov. 21, 2014.
  4. Black Past
    . Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  5. ^ "Harding, Vincent Gordon". The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. May 31, 2017. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
  6. LA Times
    . Retrieved June 10, 2015.
  7. ^ Schudel, Matt (May 22, 2014). "Vincent Harding, author of Martin Luther King Jr's antiwar speech, dies". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 10, 2015.
  8. ^ a b "Biography: Harding, Vincent Gordon". King Encyclopedia. Stanford University | Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. May 31, 2017. Retrieved November 10, 2020.
  9. ^ a b "Vincent Harding: King for the 21st century calls us to walk with Jesus", Goshen College, January 21, 2005.
  10. ^ Shearer, Tobin Miller (2015). "A Prophet Pushed Out: Vincent Harding and the Mennonites". Mennonite Life. 69. Archived from the original on October 31, 2015.

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vincent Harding.

Articles

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vincent_Harding&oldid=1203917479"