WINNIPEG, MB – The University of Winnipeg presents the distinguished civil rights activist and historian of the Civil Rights Movement Dr. Vincent Harding. His lecture Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama’s Other Ancestors is on Thursday April 2, 2009, at 7:00 pm in Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall and is free and open to the public.
Friend of Martin Luther King Junior
Harding was a Civil Rights activist and friend, colleague and former speechwriter for Martin Luther King, Jr. As King’s speechwriter, Harding drafted King’s crucial A Time to Break the Silence speech in July 1967. This speech marked King’s first public denunciation of the Vietnam War and is considered a pivotal moment for the Civil Rights Movement and resistance to the war.
Commitment to Equality & Social Justice
Harding’s commitment to racial equality and social and economic justice remains strong. He has combined his political activism with a distinguished and influential career as an historian of the African-American Experience. His books include There Is a River: the Black Struggle for Freedom in America, Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement, and Matin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero.
Eyes on the Prize
Harding’s other accomplishments include being the first director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center in Atlanta, serving as director and chairperson of The Institute of the Black World and being senior academic consultant to the award-winning PBS television series, Eyes on the Prize.
Currently he serves as Professor Emeritus of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, as co-chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project: A Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal at Iliff, and as Vice President of Institutional Transformation.
