‘We Are Citizens of a Country That We Still Have To Create’
By Cara DeGette
Editor, GPHN
This month, let us take to heart the great men and women who have worked and fought tirelessly, and with humility, for equality.
Men like former state Sen. Regis Groff, and women like Marge Gilbert, who devoted their lives to making Park Hill, and Colorado, a better place, for all. And men like Vincent Harding, the historian, writer and activist for social justice who worked in the trenches alongside his friend and colleague, Martin Luther King, Jr.
In January, Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church invited Harding to help mark the 50th anniversary of King’s visit to Park Hill, a trip during which the civil rights leader was paving the road to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was signed into law later that year.
Fifty years later, Harding urged the church crowd to think about how King’s message should resonate today.
“What could be the influence of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Park Hill in 2014, beyond nice words?” Harding asked. “I would like us to think about that.”
Harding recalled King’s famous speech, in which he hoped his children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
“How do you judge the content of the character of the children of Park Hill?” Harding asked. “How do you get to the content of the character? Just by saying it? I would like to encourage us to push ourselves on this one. How do you develop a character that is worth having?”
On May 19, Harding passed away. He was 82. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado honored him posthumously with its Carle Whitehead Memorial Award. Those in attendance were reminded that, for all of the gains made in the battle for racial equality, we have not yet arrived. They were reminded of continued, shocking, disparities in income, in housing, and in public schools.
They were reminded of another observation — and call to action — that Harding made in another speech, on his 81st birthday at a Children’s Defense Fund conference in Washington.
“We are citizens of a country that we still have to create—a just country, a compassionate country, a forgiving country, a multiracial, multi-religious country, a joyful country that cares about its children and about its elders, that cares about itself and about the world, that cares about what the earth needs as well as what individual people need,” Harding said.
“I am, you are, a citizen of a country that does not yet exist,” he continued, “and that badly needs to exist.”
As we honor Harding’s life’s work – and that of Groff’s and Gilbert’s – his words are worth carrying.