The Movement Makes Us Human: An Interview with Dr. Vincent Harding on Mennonites, Vietnam, and MLK

By Joanna Shenk and Clayborne Carson

How is it that the person who created and defined the field of Black Studies and drafted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's prophetic Beyond Vietnam speech needs an introduction, even in movement circles today? In this provocative and poignant interview, Dr. Vincent Harding reflects on the communities that shaped his early life, compelled him to join movements for justice, and sustained his ongoing transformation. He challenges those committed to justice today to consider the enduring power of nonviolent social change and to root out white supremacy in all of its forms. With his relentless commitment to education and relationship-building across lines of difference, Harding never doubted the capacity of people to create the world we need.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532635304

Joanna Shenk

Joanna Shenk is Associate Pastor at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco and co-producer of The Iconocast podcast. Before moving to San Francisco, she worked for five years on the national staff of Mennonite Church USA, helping the denomination connect with movement communities and strengthen its commitment to undoing sexism and racism. During this time she was also a part of founding a co-housing community in Elkhart, Indiana, and a local history and organizing effort called the People's History of Elkhart. Currently she lives in San Francisco's Mission District with her family where she participates in local activism and continues to learn the history of the Bay Area. She is also author of Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship and has written articles for The Mennonite, The Christian Century, Geez Magazine, and Sojourners.

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The Movement Makes Us Human

An Interview with Dr. Vincent Harding on Mennonites, Vietnam, and MLK

Joanna Shenk

Foreword by Clayborne Carson

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The Movement Makes Us Human

An Interview with Dr. Vincent Harding on Mennonites, Vietnam, and MLK

Copyright © 2018 Joanna Shenk. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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Eugene, OR 97401

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3529-8

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3531-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3530-4

Manufactured in the U.S.A. February 6, 2018

Portions of this interview with Dr. Vincent Harding were previously published in Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship (Herald Press, 2011). Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Permission granted by Mennonite World Conference and Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary to reprint articles from the Eighth Assembly of Mennonite World Conference held in Amsterdam in 1967. The articles The Beggars Are Marching . . . Where Are the Saints? and The Peace Witness and Modern Revolutionary Movements were first published in the Book of Proceedings from that Assembly.

Permission granted by the University of Mississippi, Archives and Special Collections to reprint the article I Hear Them . . . Calling (And I Know What It Means) from the Katallagete, Fall–Winter 1972.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: This Is Not a Story about Vincent and Martin

Chapter 2: Identifying with Those Who Did Not Always Know How to Identify with Me

Chapter 3: Standing at the Heart of the Black Community

Chapter 4: The Question of Nonviolence

Chapter 5: What We Have Messed Up, We Can Clean Up

Chapter 6: Reclaiming What’s Natural

Chapter 7: Closing Prayer

Conclusion: Where Are We on the Journey of Becoming Human?

Appendix A: Timeline of Vincent Harding’s Life

Appendix B: Articles by Vincent Harding

To Delaney, Soren, Rachel, Jonathan, Nicholas, Jamie and Hannah.

May you continue to grow into your deep humanity,loving yourself and others, as we build up a new world together, generation after generation.

To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/­spiritual leap and become more ‘human’ human beings. In order to change/­transform the world, they must change/­transform themselves.

—Grace Lee Boggs

Foreword

If forced to choose a single individual who best exemplified the remarkable diversity of the modern African American freedom struggle, that person would be Dr. Vincent Harding. His long life encompassed the heroic years of our struggle, when we overcame the Southern Jim Crow system of racial oppression, as well as the more difficult subsequent years, as we sought to transform hard-won citizenship rights into universal notions of human rights. He managed to bridge the ideological splits of the era after the landmark civil rights reforms of the 1960s by insisting that the struggle for justice was a broad deep river flowing from a painful past toward a better future.

He was one of our struggle’s intellectual leaders, a gifted historian and teacher, but always comfortable among grassroots activists guided by experience rather than academic training. A close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and many of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) colleagues, he was also supportive of the brash militants and community organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He shared King’s Social Gospel convictions and nonviolent principles, but sympathized with the Black Power and Black Arts movements that flowered during the late 1960s.

I first met him during the early 1970s while I was engaged in research for my study of SNCC, later published as In Struggle. Vincent was the founding director of the Institute of the Black World—an impossibly demanding role, given the warring ideological factions of the time. Although we were from quite different backgrounds, I soon found that we shared a belief that the black freedom movement was most effective when it was racially inclusive and grounded in human principles, rather than narrow conceptions of racial identity. Amidst the rancor that pervaded the racial consciousness of the period, he was a consistent quiet voice of reason and compassion.

Our relationship deepened during the mid-1980s, when we worked together as senior advisors for the landmark television series Eyes on the Prize. During two years of intense dialogues with producer Henry Hampton and his talented group of filmmakers, Vincent provided a uniquely valuable perspective as a dedicated activist and trenchant observer. The resulting documentary would shape the historical understanding of Americans and encourage the production of many other documentaries that illuminated the social justice and human rights movements inspired by the African American struggle.

Vincent, a dedicated scholar and mentor, was a longtime friend as well as historical, political, and spiritual advisor to me and many others who were fortunate enough to know him. During the 1960s, Vincent and his late wife, Rosemarie, had a close relationship with the King family, who lived nearby in Atlanta. He was a committed activist and was the person Martin chose to draft the first version of his controversial Riverside Church speech opposing the war in Vietnam. He was also close to many of the SNCC activists I knew, and shared Ella Baker’s belief that self-reliant grassroots leaders were essential to overcoming the Jim Crow system of legalized racial segregation and discrimination.

Vincent’s wisdom was a great gift to me in the mid-1980s after he became a founding member of the national Advisory Board of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project. At crucial moments in my sometimes strained relationship with King Center presidents Coretta Scott King and Dexter King, I relied on Vincent’s soft-spoken guidance that was partly rooted in his own uneven relations with the King Center. Without his advice, I do not think that I would still be editor of King’s papers.

During the past three decades, Vincent remained a treasured friend and source of wisdom. He was always willing to accept my invitations to visit and consult with my Stanford colleagues. Watching him deliver guest lectures to my research staff and students, I realized he was a master teacher, encouraging students to listen closely and speak honestly in ways that I could only hope to engender. I recall especially an amazing session in 2008 in my African American Freedom Struggle course when he encouraged students to think about King as a leader of a movement to achieve democracy. He began the session with probing questions that prompted students to share, and showed me how little I knew about those I had been teaching that term.

In 2010 he played a major role in a nationally broadcast symposium the King Institute sponsored at Stanford. Among the group of veteran activists, Vincent stood out as a singularly thoughtful interpreter of the human rights struggles of the past half century. His precise and measured way of speaking enabled him to capture the audience’s full attention and convey challenging ideas in readily understandable terms.

I also remember the week in 2012 when we traveled through Palestinian communities in the West Bank discussing King and his nonviolent principles. Although our delegation included a number of prominent veterans of the African American freedom struggle, Vincent was clearly our most influential member. Palestinian activists quickly learned to trust him as a mentor and friend. Although he was already in his eighties, he displayed remarkable energy as he engaged in extended discussions with Palestinians seeking his guidance. This was particularly evident during our meetings with leaders of the nonviolent resistance movement in the villages of Bil’in and Nabi Saleh, the site of weekly demonstrations protesting the Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land.

I last saw Vincent at the Dorothy Cotton Institute Gala to celebrate International Human Rights Day held in Ithaca, New York, on December 10, 2013. When I learned that Vincent would be one of the three honored guests (the others were Andrew Young and Dorothy Cotton), I knew that I could not miss being there. As was his custom, Vincent delivered brief insightful remarks that drew attention to the importance of the occasion and to Dorothy’s achievements rather than to himself. While there I learned that he was engaged to marry Aljosie Aldrich Knight, who had also been a member of the West Bank delegation. I was so happy for both of them and regretted that I could not attend their wedding in Atlanta several weeks later.

In early 2014 Vincent sent a letter to dear friends, asking for our input regarding his decision to begin a long-delayed autobiographical journey. We will never know what additional reflections Vincent might have provided about his unique life journey, but, from the evidence of his heartfelt letter, we can be sure that his autobiography would have drawn attention to those he credited with loving him into life: the mother who raised him, the wife who sustained him, his brother and companion Martin King, the sisters and brothers of SNCC, the grassroots leaders who risked their lives to transform the South, and 21st century community organizers such as those working with the irrepressible Grace Lee Boggs in Detroit.

I was greatly saddened to learn in May of 2014 that the Great Soul, Dr. Vincent Harding, left this world during surgery to repair his heart. It is difficult to imagine that this courageous, nonviolent warrior has departed us. Vincent was an invaluable contributor to the