Later, he served as the director and chairperson for the Institute of the Black World. Memorial Center in Atlanta and served as the center’s first director. After King was killed, Harding worked with his widow, Coretta, to establish the Martin Luther King, Jr. King to draft the first version of his controversial speech “A Time To Break Silence” at Riverside Church where he publicly voiced opposition to the war in Vietnam. “He was indeed an invaluable contributor to the African-American freedom struggle and was one of the few remaining living links to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.”Ĭarson said that, during the 1960s, Harding and his late wife, Rosemarie, shared a close relationship with the King family and was selected in 1967 by Dr. and an occasional speech writer for the civil rights leader. Clayborne Carson, a professor of history and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, said that Harding was a friend and colleague of Dr. “He knew all that theological stuff, but he never got into theological arguments with you,” said Bracey, who added that, throughout his life, Harding was a devoted Mennonite and a staunch believer in nonviolence.ĭr. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who pointed out that, despite Harding’s formal training as a historian, he was more of a theologian who was influenced early on by other religious thinkers like Dr.

“He was a gentle warrior,” remembered Dr. Yesterday, they paid homage to him as a movement man who tried to make a difference and end racial injustice. News of his death at the age of 82 came as a blow to the legions of activists and scholars who worked with him over the years. Harding was primarily an activist, who lent his talents and energy to social justice causes, moving freely among the South and becoming active in groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the 1960s. Vincent Harding was prolific, penning classic texts such as There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero even as he held down teaching positions at institutions like Spelman, the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore and Temple University.īut the classroom was his second calling. A productive scholar, who wrote about the Civil Rights Movement, not as a distant outsider but as one who was intimately involved in the day-to-day struggles of Blacks in the American South.īy most accounts, Dr.

Vincent Harding was active in groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the 1960s.He was a renaissance man.

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