Vincent Harding is an author, historian, and activist who was born in New York City and grew up in Harlem and the Bronx. After graduating from the City College of New York, he earned a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University. Harding spent two years in the army, after which he lived in Chicago for six years, serving as lay minister in churches on Chicago's south side and pursuing a doctorate at the University of Chicago. In the 1960s Harding was an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement, assisting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the SNCC, and the Congress of Racial Equality throughout the South. Harding went on to teach at Spelman College, Pendle Hill Study Center, University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. He was the first director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and served as director and chairperson of The Institute of the Black World. Among Harding’s publications are Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero (1996), Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement (1990), There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (1981), and The Other American Revolution (1980). He was also senior academic consultant to the award-winning PBS television series, “Eyes on the Prize.” Harding is professor emeritus of Religion and Social Transformation at the Iliff School of Theology, and is the co-founder and chair of the Veterans of Hope Project, an interdisciplinary initiative on religion, culture, and grassroots democracy.