Harding also knew that 91����Ƶ was the first historically white colleges in Virginia to admit African-American students and one of the first in the South. But those students couldn’t go into most restaurants in Harrisonburg and their parents couldn’t stay in local hotels when they came to visit their children.

Now 82, Harding is coming back to 91����Ƶ. He is the speaker for the second annual. His topic: “Is America Possible?” He will also speak at the university chapel service earlier that day at 10 a.m. in Lehman Auditorium and at the seminary chapel the next day at 11 a.m. in Martin Chapel.

Harding was a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. for the last 10 years of King’s life. Harding is perhaps best known as the person who drafted King’s powerful (and controversial)  speech, in which King announced his opposition to the Vietnam War and criticized the destructive, unfair impact of U.S. economic, political and social policies, both domestically and abroad. King delivered the speech on April 4, 1967, before a group of anti-war opinion leaders at Riverside Church in New York City.

After King’s assassination exactly a year later, Harding became the first director of the . Later he was the senior academic advisor for the PBS television series on the civil rights movement titled “Eyes on the Prize.” In a 2008 interview with Democracy Now, Harding said that King toward the end of his life “was calling us to a way that was very difficult, a way beyond racism, a way beyond materialism and a way beyond militarism.”

Harding founded the Veterans of Hope Project, which continues to collect the stories of people who dedicated their lives to social change. The project is based at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, where he was a professor of religion and social transformation for 23 years until his retirement in 2004.

He says his current work is focused on encouraging America to become “we the people” and to create a “more perfect union” as well as participate in the making of a more just and compassionate world. His most recent book, published in 2013, is America Will Be! It is a volume of conversations on hope, freedom, and democracy between Harding and longtime Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda.

Harding’s other books include There Is a River – The Black Struggle for Freedom in America; Martin Luther King – The Inconvenient Hero; and Hope and History – Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement.

A native of New York City, Harding graduated in history from City College of New York in 1952, then earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1953, before serving two years in the U.S. Army. In 1956 he earned a master’s degree in history from the University of Chicago, followed by a doctorate in history from Chicago in 1965.

In the mid-1950s he learned about the Anabaptist/Mennonite movement of the Protestant Reformation. From 1958 to 1961, Harding was the co-pastor of Woodlawn Mennonite Church in Chicago. He often challenged Mennonites to live up to, and stand up for, their ideals about sisterhood and brotherhood socially and politically. At a conference on Mennonites and Race in Chicago in 1959, Harding met his future wife, Rosemarie Freeney. She was a 1955 sociology graduate of a Mennonite college, Goshen in Indiana, and a member of , where she worked in social services.

Vincent and Rosemarie married in 1960 and, in 1961, settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where they founded the South’s first interracial voluntary service center, Mennonite House, under the auspices of . The center, which was also their home (a block from Martin Luther King’s home), was an important gathering place for movement activists who found respite, hospitality, encouragement and stimulating dialogue. (Just before Rosemarie died from complications of diabetes in 2004, she noted that she had remained a member of Bethel Mennonite Church over her adult life.)

During Vincent’s first visit to 91����Ƶ – and subsequent visits over the years – “he shocked and offended some members of the community, but inspired and energized others,” says 91����Ƶ professor . Among the inspired were two 91����Ƶ professors, John Lapp and Samuel Horst, who helped start a committee that pushed for – and won – integration of the public schools in Harrisonburg.

The Keim History Lecture Series are named for the late Albert Keim, a member of the 91����Ƶ faculty from 1965 to 2000. For seven of those years he was academic dean. Keim was a popular history professor, and his courses included African-American History.

Samuel L. Horst, professor emeritus of history, has been invited to speak on his research of a white educator who taught blacks in Lynchburg, Va., following the Civil War as part of the John D. Owen, Jr. Lynchburg History Series.

Dr. Horst will address the topic, “Learning How: The Odyssey of a Lynchburg Freedmen Educator,” at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12 at the Jones Memorial Library in Lynchburg. Horst, who taught at 91����Ƶ for 28 years until his retirement in 1984, wrote “The Fire of Liberty in Their Hearts: The Diary of Jacob E. Yoder,” published in 1997 by the Virginia State Library.

Horst edited the diaries of Jacob Eschbach Yoder, an idealistic young Mennonite from the Boyertown, Pa., area who came to Virginia after the Civil War to help educate freed slaves.

Yoder taught freedmen in Lynchburg in 1866 and from 1868 to 1871 supervised black schools over a six-county region as well as in Lynchburg. From 1871 until his death in 1905 he taught blacks in the newly-opened public schools.

Lynchburg’s black population had mushroomed after the war as ex-slaves moved in to take advantage of government rations from the Freedmen’s Bureau and to capitalize on their new freedom.

Jacob E. Yoder (back row, at right) at a Freedman’s Bureau School in Lynchburg, circa 1876-77.

“Yoder eventually became generally well-accepted by both blacks and whites in Lynchburg because of his low-key style and his patient efforts,” Horst noted.

Horst, who earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Virginia, is also the author of “Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other Peace Churches, 1739-1789 (Herald Press, 1979), “Mennonites in the Confederacy: A Study in Civil War Pacifism (1967), “Education for Manhood: Education of Blacks in Virginia During the Civil War” (University Press of America, 1987) and most recently researched and co-authored with Edsel Burdge, Jr., a former student of Horsts’, “The Mennonites of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Washington County, Maryland, 1730-1970” (Herald Press, 2004).

The lecture is open to the public free of charge. For more information, call 846-0501.

A retired 91����Ƶ history professor has collaborated with one of his former students on a massive church history volume, "The Mennonites of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Washington County, Maryland, 1730-1970."

Samuel L. Horst of Harrisonburg, a professor emeritus of history at 91����Ƶ, and Edsel Burdge, Jr., of Shippensburg, Pa., a 1981 91����Ƶ grad who studied under Horst, co-authored the 928-page hardcover book, published by Herald Press of Scottdale, Pa.

The book tells the stories of three centuries of faith and life among the Washington County (Md.), and Franklin County (Pa.) Mennonites.

From small beginnings in colonial American settlements, issues such as personal spiritual commitment, corporate accountability, nonconformity and peace have been constants. As questions of language, fashion, work, education and mission produced internal stresses, the group struggled to maintain group unity.

"This history describes in detail the particulars of that struggle as well as recounting stories illustrative of community life in general," Dr. Horst said.

The book was officially released June 14 at the annual meeting of the Mennonite Historical Association of the Cumberland Valley.

Horst, who taught American history courses at 91����Ƶ 1949-51, 1954-1967 and 1972-84, is the author of "The Fire of Liberty in Their Hearts: The Diary of Jacob E. Yoder of the Freedman’s Bureau School, Lynchburg, Va.,1866-1870" (Library of Virginia, 1996), "Education for Manhood: The Education of Blacks in Virginia During the Civil War" (University Press of America, 1987), co-author of "Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other Peace Churches, 1739-1789" (Herald Press, 1979) and "Mennonites in the Confederacy" (Herald Press, 1967).

Burdge, a Franklin Co. native, is a curriculum writer for Christian Light Education and edits the "Concococheague Mennonist," a publication of the Mennonite Historical Association of Cumberland Valley.