There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (Paperback)

by Vincent Harding (Author) "It began at the edge of our homeland, where the verdant forests and tropical bush gave way gradually to the sandy stretches of the Guinea..." (more)
Key Phrases: black radical analysis, freed black community, black fugitives, United States, Nat Turner, South Carolina (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
From an unflinchingly black perspective, Harding writes of the struggle of heroic African americans to achieve freedom from slavery. Index; photographs.


About the Author

Vincent Gordon Harding (born July 25, 1931) is an African American historian and a scholar of religion and society. An activist as well, he is best known for his work with and writings about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harding was born in Harlem, and attended New York Public Schools, graduating from Morris High School in the Bronx in 1948. After finishing high school, Harding enrolled in the City College of New York, where he received a B.A. in History in 1953. The following year he graduated from Columbia University, where he earned an M.S. in Journalism. Harding served in the U.S. Army from 1953-1955. In 1956 he received an M.A. in History at the University of Chicago. In 1965 he received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.

In 1960, Harding and his wife, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, moved to Atlanta, Georgia to participate in the Southern Freedom Movement (also known as the American civil rights movement) as representatives of the Mennonite Church. The Hardings co-founded Mennonite House, an interracial voluntary service center and Movement gathering place in Atlanta. The couple traveled throughout the South in the early 1960s working as reconcilers, counselors and participants in the Movement, assisting the anti-segregation campaigns of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Vincent Harding occasionally drafted speeches for Martin Luther King, including King's famous anti-Vietnam speech, "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.

Harding taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Spelman College, Temple University, Swarthmore College, and Pendle Hill Study Center. He was the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and of the Institute of the Black World, both located at Atlanta. He also became senior academic consultant for the PBS television series Eyes on the Prize.

Harding currently serves 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. Harding taught at Iliff as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation from 1981 to 2004.

Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (January 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156890895
• ISBN-13: 978-0156890892
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #473,715 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for anyone organizing against oppression of any kind, December 16, 2000

By	Sabida (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

Vincent Harding has introduced to us a well researched and well presented picture of the opposing forces to America's economic system based on slave and cheap labor. He chronicles the parallel between the systems of oppression and the systems of resistance against oppression. The River of resistance will forever run through a society where opportunity is squelched by the formation of inequality.

He removes the fictionalized view of the plantation and the relationship between master and slave and replaces it with documented reality.

Where there is oppression there is resistance to that oppression. This reality has been lost in the Hollywood depictions of slave uprisings, and the "run away slave". It is made clear that Harriet Tubman did not "run away" she was part of a well thought out and masterful organized effort to abolish slavery. There are many well researched and documented instances of organized resistance as well as individual acts of rebellion. These make up the river of resistance that flowed and continues to flow in the presence of human bigotry and oppression. This is a must read for individuals and groups of all races, cultures and nationalities who want to understand their own motives and actions against economic and social tyranny in America and abroad. Mr. Harding makes it quite clear that there are well thought out schemes and timing which are present with both the oppressor and those resisting and overturning oppression.

This is not a novel, but a text book well worth studying. He does not sensationalize nor create images of heroism. I have three copies of this book and refer to it often. Mr. Harding is a gifted researcher and scholar.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly Work, October 5, 2007

By	Linda J. Jenkins "LJJenkins" (Rohnert Park, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I purchased my first copy of There Is a River over two decades ago. I read, underlined, and wrote notes along the margins of almost every page, and purchased other books from Mr. Harding's extensive resource list. I couldn't get enough of this phenomenal text, so I read it several more times. Over the years, I purchased copies for my sons, and most recently, for one of my former students. This book truly is a must-read and it should be owned by every Black family in America. There is indeed a river! Thank you Vincent Harding.