Religion

VINCENT HARDING • "I Hear Them . . . Calling"

h ·nk it's true," he told the Chief Elder and the comm • "I d "I t 1 , . . umty. on't

d tand it yet. I don t know what 1t 1s. But sometimes I see someth"

un ers b ·e's beyond." mg. drnaY e I ;.n h took her arm from his shoulders. ;Jo:as." she said, speaki~g not ~o him a!one but to the entire commu-

. of which he was a part, you will be tramed to be our next Receiver of nity y We thank you for your childhood." l,{ernor . d I f Then she turned . an e t the stage, left him there alone, standing and facing the crowd, which began spontaneously the collective murmur of his

name- . "Jonas." It was a whisper at first: hushed, barely audible. "Jonas. Jonas." Then louder, faster. "JONAS. JONAS. JONAS." With the chant, Jonas knew, the community was accepting him and his

new role, giving him life, the way they had given it to the newchild Caleb. His heart swelled with gratitude and pride.

But at the same time he was filled with fear. He did not know what his selection meant. He did not know what he was to become.

Or what would become of him.

VINCENT HARDING

"I Hear Them ... Calling"

. . 1

d h h t h"s adult life in domestic Vincent Harding has been ,nvo ve t roug ou

1 •

d · t· e This essay was written and international movements for peace an JUS ,c · . . . h th breaking book There Is fairly early in his career, as he was wnt1ng t e pa · . • ( g8i) Presently Profes- a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom 1n Amenco

1 · 1 . , • at Iliff School ofTheo ·

sor Emeritus of Religion and Social Trans,ormat,on . . . . .. speaker and writer. ogy 1n Denver Harding continues to be an inspiring ' . fi The Giver allows us to

Placing this essay just after the selection rom

F 11

(N y rk· Paulist Press, 1974), PP· rom Callings! ed. James Y. Holloway and Will D. Camp be ew

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•

i7·69,

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QUESTION S 5. To Whom Should I Listen?

envision another, quite different example of a community that noticed the gifts of a young person and sought to shape his future. How does Har- ding's sense of the scope and needs of the community that is "callin ,, him change over time? Do his relationship to this community and h· g t~ 1s vari- ous ways of responding to the call of his people deepen or threaten what we might call , with Charles Taylor, his "authenticity"?

Callings are strange things. I think I've heard a fair number in my time, per- haps fewer than I was supposed to - or maybe it was more; I'm not certain now. Sometimes they proved to be nothing more than echoes bouncin off from other lives Oives I sometimes thought were mine) and passed on ~heir way. Others puzzled me, and led me into ways I do not yet understand. Some I understand and fear. A few - perhaps more than I know - I have followed as fur as they led; and some are still moving. Still moving, prepar- ing to join themselves to the sounds of the new summons, and I suspect there are yet borders to cross.

Callings are strange things. The first I remember (or want to remember?) came through the Black believers who were my extended fa mily in a Harlem congregation. I felt their loving, often demanding grip on my life at an early time - maybe 6 or 7 - and heard the call through all their voices and fiercely possessive hopes.

Up there on platforms and stages, at all the church programs, reciting the poems and Bible verses, I heard them set me apart: "He's going to be a preacher," that call said (really meaning, he is going to be our preacher, ours, to assure the continuance of our hopes beyond the borders of our lives), and it was a while before I understood that it was supposed to be my calling, that I should hear it and respond.

It took a while for that to happen, for I was hearing other calls as well - or thought I was, though I'm sure I didn 't name them that- and was trying to move wi th them. Like the calling to be an athlete. (This was before Jackie Rob- inson, so I'm not sure where I thought that road would lead. Perhaps I simply thought that a man should be able to spend his life doing what he really liked, and I liked everything that had to do with balls and bats and running and jumping and falling and feeling the strength of bodies against each other. I liked them fa r more than the violin and then the piano lessons that my mother hoped in vain I'd like.) That lasted for a while, but f wasn't growing as tall as I thought an athlete ought to be - especially one who thought he was called to play fi rst base, among other things - and f began to hear other calls.

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V1NCENT HARDING "/ Hear Them C 11· · · • a 1ng"

ehoW I got involved with building model . 1 sorn h d 6 h atrp anes 1 b

ause no one a ot ered to mass produ 1 .. ' party, I sup-se ec b ce te evis1on pO ~bably wouldn't ~ave een able to afford one) and art! sets yet (and we P brothers and sisters to share the sometimes I P1 dy because there were no one y ays With Th

the call came to be an aeronautical engineer (wh t · at's when 1 k c !ks a ever that is) d 1 d

't found out that B ac ,o weren't supposed to b . • an ha n . fi d h e aeronauttcal eng· What J did in out was t at my mathematical skill , •-

neers- h h h" h h I s werent good enough to pass t e test or t e ig sc oo where all the really bright, aero- nautical enginee~types were supposed to attend; so that call too was ressed aside. I think the model aITpla_nes were pretty good, though.

P Meanwhile, the Io 1 ving,_ t1ghthly grtppmg community was pressing me

ro.-ward _ not entire y against t e_ sometimes showmanship of my Will - into minor church offices, and other responsibilities. And I continued to be up in front at the _programs (we, education-oriented folks that we were, mostly of West Indian hentage on the way from Africa, we called them Ly- ceum programs, following traditions of self-improvement deeply instilled in the African people of this country and elsewhere), reciting, only now it was a kind of quasi-acting we used to call Dramatic Reading. That was how I met James Weldon Johnson and Pa_ul Lawrence_ Dunbar (not really knowing who I was meeting, not really hearing many things they were callmg to me), and Walt Whitman and Alfred Lord Tennyson and a lot of even stranger people. Then on youth days I would periodically be the preacher, and that was enough to assure my extended family - and I think my mother too - that the call they heard was authentic, needing only the seasoning of time and the deepening of commitment, much seasoning and deepening- because I had some ways about me that they weren't quite sure were supposed to go with preaching in a Biblically-immersed community of saints. .

But I hadn't stopped hearing the callings from other sources. In h,g~ school the teachers were the media, and I heard the call to high schoo teaching. Then one odd teacher told me I'd never pass the oral examination

· h · f h And high school teach-wit such a wide space between my two rant teet . ing was put aside for a time. f h 11· I

Now, this thing with writing is part of the strangeness O t e ca tgs. have not yet moved deeply enough into the chambers of the paS

t to e c:-

. h h hurch community was t e tam about where and how it came. Per aps t e c ·f rterly • h 'bl d acting as t my qua voice ere too, encouraging my terrt e poetry an at doc-·1· h B'ble lessons were gre reports or my summaries and hom1 res on t e 1 . the younger u ( . . t ry feeltngs arnong ments arousing, of course, certain con ra h Day Christian

b . T b rnacle Sevent .

mem ers of my family-tribe at v,crory a e but I know 1t Church). That original voice is at least temporarily (oS

t to me,

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QUESTIONS • 5- To Whom Should I Listen?

exisied, and if it was the community of believers, they likely did not then that they had helped open me to one of the major tensions of know of callings, a sometimes fier:ce stretching between writing and spe:[ World tween writing and preaching, between scholarship and rninist ~g, be- midst of the people. ry in the

And by the time I got to college - somehow I think I always knew I had ro go to college; and since there was absolutely no money for such a thin 1 had to go to the only college I knew where you could at once attend Wi h g, tuition and also have all the teachers and the loving tribe beam and say ~'h out wonderful, City College, that's a hard school to get into" - the loudest ~allow was towards writing, pressing me deeply into short story courses, journali~ courses (finally majoring in History because there weren't enough writin courses), still experimenting With poetry, mostly devoied to working Wit~ the weekly campus newspaper, eventually becoming the inevitable FIRST NEGRO editor of that ancient institution of wisdom and scandal.

At Gty College, the calling towards writing meant another tension pressed me cowards a period of largely white friends and co-workers wh~ vied with the ancestral community for my loyalties and my attention, led me into certain strange pathways which shut out voices I should have heard led to great pain. But callings are strange things. '

Some of the Tribe was likely worried when, after college, I went off to something else that wasn't really preaching, to graduate work in Journalism. (With all due respect to their worries, I was more worried about the Army then. That was a call I hoped to avoid for as long as possible.) Again the ten- sions of coilege were there, perhaps multiplied, as I was clearly being groomed for another FIRST NEGRO position. The serious and painful dou- ble voices were there, raising questions about the calJings of the believers down the hill. through the park, in Harlem. and the callings which some- times seemed so right and noble and GOOD FOR THE RACE) up at City ColJege and over at Morningside Heights - and the worlds were deeply in tension. Callings will sometimes do that.

When I finally had to answer the call of the draft board, it was 19,3. Knowin~ of n~ movement, lacking courage and desire co g~ the path of a CO.: wh1Ch I did know a bi1 about - bu1 didn't really hear that call, perhaps didn t wane to - I went in. I wanted desperately to be sent to Germany or Ja- pan or ~ven Korea, any place outside of this country- for "education," not from alienation. yet. By then I thought I had flltered out the central call among_the callings. and prepared for the next FIRST NEGRO experience, at some liberal newspap i k Times. So m

O er, my pre erence, of course, being the New Yor

· Y P st-Army movement seemed fairly well established as I went

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VINCENT HARDING • "I Hear Them ... Calling"

. h aring all the raucous sounds_ of dea1h and animality which . iJt, • the Army, but determmmg to be a good sold' Substnute for ll e inetting overseas somewhere. ter, perhaps even an officer, ~n the strangeness that has surrounded so much f l'fi

Butnlow from deep sounding sources in the surround~n my I

e (coming, I kfJOW • d . d d h g ancestral com-

a.nY of saints), I ~l~o ~c1 e • per aps_ for the first time, to try to listen con- ~iously, with ant1C1pat1on, for the callings. I think I wanted to see if! would hea.r confirmations of the voices which had come through the believers or [he teachers, seeking some release from the te~sion, suspecting perhaps that

1 rnight be pressed acres~ new borders, followmg, listening. And in a place 1

never e.Xpected, under circumstances I would not have chosen, a brother spoke and asked me if I had ever thought of teaching; and for reasons far too complex and too far away to speak of now, I knew that I had heard the voice, ,he calling for that time.

(Strange about t~e Arm~. It neve~ sent me anywhere, except Fort Dix, N.J. and Fort Benjamin Harnson, Indiana.- part~y be_cause I knew how to [)'Pe and play handball . Strange, too, that time of hstemng. I ended up reject- ing all my inclinations_ towards the g~od soldier, ~ecame a C.O. in my heart. Strange, too: I had decided to engage ma very senous and sustained study of <he Bible, partly for the listening, partly to prove to my girlfriend that she ought to be a Seventh Day Adventist like me. I did not know that in those long wrestlings with text and spirit I would be engaging in a major step on my journey beyond the borders of the loving family-tribe of believers at Vic- wry Tabernacle [but like all tribal partings, of course, never being able to leave them).)

!twas strange about the call . I still had the words of the odd high school ieachcr in my mind, ard decided that if I were going to teach it might be beuer to try college, where I assumed that spaces between teeth didn't count. But I knew nothing about graduate schools, and finally, when press_ed 10 choose among the ones where I had been accepted, opened myself wilh fea r and trembling to the voice of the tribe/community/church, and went to Chicago- two weeks after discharge from the Army-where I could be of assistance as interim, part-time pastor of a little mission congregation

th at

Viciory Tabernacle sponsored there. That made the graduate school acce_pt-

bl I Id be anchored in an extension

a e, worldly as they knew it was. Now, wou d out of the tribe; so they thought the calls and prayers had finally rawn me of 1hc sttange and various paths_ I had explored. . s In Chicago. for the

How do you explain it? Callings are strange th'"g · strangely it f, . . H rlem and the Bronx - 1rst time - after having grown up m a I k b O condition in was in Chicago that I finally heard and saw the B ac ur a

399

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QUESTIONS • 5- To Whom Should I Listen?

Ame~ca: On the _Southside, I hear~ its singing and its screams, saw its d rcmunanon and its terror. sensed tts freedom and its captivity. And w _e- there was much I did not then understand about such calls I kne h· hile calling me. ' w t ts Was

. One day I shall try to understand _and speak more fully of the painful callmg which took me away from the little m1ss1on congregation _ d timately away from my immediate (but not my ultimate) relationshi an ul- tribe of my childhood and my youth. That calling is not fully clear t/ to

th e

d u· . . k f me yet an even It ~vere, 1t ~s not yet tim~ to spea o it. This much can be said: th~ move to an mterrac1al congregation as a lay pastor of a team ministr seemed to allow me to hold the tension of Blackness and whiteness (it y of co~rse, a time when such things seemed most urgent), the tensio::r teachrng and preaching, of study and ministry. But those are only superficial statements, and should be received as such for now.

Nor is it yet time to speak fully of the ultimately transforming call tha, led to marriage, a call far different than any I had known, a call I was in too ~any ways unprepared to understand in all the richness of its meanings and tts summons. But I know it is a calling, mine.

Then, before graduate work had ended, the call of the Southern Free- dom Movement became overwhelming, pressing aside almost every other voice.. There was no escaping it. It possessed me during my first, exploring journey into the South (grasped me there sitting on Martin King's bed in Montgomery where he rested recovering from his stabbing). It came to Chi- cago in the body of the students and found me. While sit-ins and freedom- rides were still sweeping across the South, we left Chicago and went South, hearing, following a call.

We shall understand it better by and by, and also speak more clearly of it, that calling. Now let it suffice to say that it was then that all the fiercely gripping, special callings of the South began, calls of the Movement, of Southwest Georgia (home of my wife's parents, repository of so many memories of hope and fear) , of all the stretching land upon which my peo- ple walked. and worked, and ran , and stood, and died. Then it began, all the callings of Birmingham and Tuskegee, of Montgomery and Mobile, of Jack-

and Meridian, of Gulfport and Greenwood, of New Orleans and Charleston, of Hickory and Atlanta, of Ella Baker and Amzie Moore, of Ralph Abernathy and Bill Shields, of Bob Moses Parris and Annelle Ponder, of Jim and Diane, of Septima Clark and Slater King, of Clarence Jordan and Siaughton Lynd - this was the beginning of new callings.

And when, after four years that encompassed a generation of struggle, when the Movement had passed its height, it was possible to hear strange

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VINCENT HARDING • "J Hear Them ... Calling"

~Ii•&' through personal tragedy, and there were endin s an . c . Then finally the fimshmg of graduate work dg h d beginnings •"''"· ·h b antebeg·· ,. h. g _ still wit a space etween the front two h tnnmg of "" ,n 11· b teet Th•"' the latest ca mgs egan. From somewhere -·had B . ed?- there was an urgent aching to understand the meanin ud~ha vis- ,, d. the 2oth anniversary of Hiroshima that need I g of Vietnam, an on f k . • pungedmep h

erficial surfaces o my nowmg, brought me in touch with h ast t e suf~" , brutal tale, that heroic defense of life, and provided t. e meaning o u,a f new impetus fo

Ontinuing movement away ram this America to d . r rr,y c . ' war s a radically ,ransformed society.

Teaching, spaces and all. There the latest callings began. Teaching his- iory I was called to understand h_ow little I knew of history. Teaching Black siudents, I learned how httle thss Black student, this FIRST NEGRO, had b<eJ1 caught, especially about the truth ofh,s own long pilgrimage, about his p«>ple's struggles against the powers of death, about their determined movement towards new life. And when I knew that, I began_ as in the ArntY, on1y a different army now- to listen again, hearing some things that

1 had let slip by in the days of the Tribe, understanding things I had only seen in the Movement. I began to hear voices more loudly than ever before, and ,hey will not be silent, for they are me.

I hear all the varied sounds of my homeland, all its human sounds, all its animals, its spirit-filled rivers and lakes, its waterfalls, its mountains, its grass and trees playing with the wind. I hear them all.

1 hear all the screaming of my homeland, all the mournful pacing down 1o 1he slave baracoons, all the piercing, dying shouts, all the parting wailing sounds. I hear children, crying children, I hear men, I hear women, calling, now desiring only to be remembered, and vindicated. I hear them between lhe decks of the ships called Jesus and St. John, and Liberty, and Justice. I hear !heir whispers and then their bursting yells as they come on decks prepared 10 die, and, if necessary, to kill for their freedom. I hear them calling, falling on 1he decks, thrown, often leaping to their ending - but not endmg - m ihe waters. I hear them singing as they go under the waves - free. .

I hear my people. I hear them calling from Virginia to San francisco,_I hear their songs and their cries and their defiant shouts and their longdsi- 1 h h lost in the wil er- cnces through all the horrors called slavery. I ear t em k h . Dess, I hear them moving, seeking the North Star, determined to ma et eir

way to freedom. . Id. one another through I hear them in preaching and praying, ho mg h h·Idbirth and

hunger and parting, through torture and sickness, throug c 1

dymg, I hear them calling.

401

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QUESTIONS • 5. To Whom Should I Listen?

I hear my people, lurching, flooding towards freedom during the Civ;I War, seizing their own liberty. I hear them fighting and falling, rising and hoping again. I hear them in all the halcyon hopeful first days of Recon- struction, in all the bloody years that followed, when hope was crushed by the force of white arms and the power of white betrayals.

I hear them, mourning, weeping, wailing, prostrate around the thou- sands of trees where brothers and sisters were hung and burned and muti- lated beyond recognition by a savage people. I hear them vowing never to give in, never to tum back, to endure, to resist, to live, to go on. I hear their calling.

I hear them coming North, I hear them in the armies, I hear them in the mills, I hear them in the railroads, I hear them in the fires, I hear them in the waters, I hear Nat Turner and David Walker, I hear Douglass and Delaney, I hear Harriet and Sojourner, I hear Ida B. Wells and Bishop Turner, I hear Garvey and DuBois, I hear Bessie Smith. I hear them calling.

I hear them in depression, picking their way through garbage piles, sharing even that with one another. I hear them calling for Robeson, for Fa- ther, for Daddy, for Adam, for Solidarity, for help.

I hear them in war, dying for a land that will not protect them. I hear them coming beyond war to struggle for truth. I hear them in court. I hear them in the streets. I hear ladies walking in Montgomery. I hear Martin preaching in the churches, hear his footsteps on the road. I hear old folks singing in churches, standing before dogs. I hear students risking their lives, freezing in jail, singing while hungry, laughing when afraid, not being over- come. I hear them calling.

I hear my people marching, refusing to stop, refusing to be quiet, refus- ing to be satisfied, refusing to die.

I hear Malcolm, I hear Stokely, I hear Rap and Feather, I hear Ruby and Jim. I hear Jonathan. I hear Angela. I hear Attica. I hear dying Panthers and preachers. I hear living men and women. I hear them. I hear voices, and I know what it means.

Callings are a strange thing. I know what it means: I am a witness, in spite of myself, beyond myself, and their voices must be heard.

I am a witness (teacher, preacher, ranter, raver, dissident, resistant, radi- cal. revolutionary, silent carrier) , witness ro their truth and power, pressed forward by the force of their being, by the integrity of their struggle, by the silent roaring of their voices. No turning back.

I know what it means: I am historian - now recognizing all the long ago callings - summoned to tell their story, for them, for myself, for our children . They shall not be forgotten .

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VINCENT HARDING "/ Hear Them ... Calling"

ns I am now of them, deep calling unto deep. Their Voice h It mea , undly into me that I am flesh of their flesh bo f h . as en-pro,o . . , neo t e1rbo

1.,t<f so . song pain of their pam, hope of their hope F I

ne, f thetr '. .. . · orever ost to song O • bJ·ectiV1ty, forever seared by the passton of their r, I rly o bl b d h tery move-schO a unwilling and una e to e etac ed from their struggle. Bound b

mint, f 1., and death and love - and intimations of the morning P Y _.,i , o ue d . . h h . . rtvt-'°'~ ermitted, summone to JOm t em, t err struggle is mine, and I am 1eged, P d into tomorrow, searching for the way to carry the struggl -''ed forwar e, to cau b nds to build the new land of their hopes. kthe o , . Th fi . brc• 11. s are strange thmgs. ey md you tn the midst of your own (Ca mg

fumily.) my mother sighing, scrubbing all the floors in all the white J hear ' . d . es bearing with love and pam an aruaous prayer the burden that 1

hom ' 0 would like to hear my father, and one day I suspect I shall.) J w,s/am. eans I am still son, hope, strength, promise for tomorrow, beyond knoW ttm

the pain and death. . . all I hear voices - of my chtldren, Rachel Sojourner and Jonathan DuBois. 1 believe that ancient rivers of our people flow tn them. I hear their voices,

d I know what it means. It means I am called to be father, rock and an th ncourager for the struggles of tomorrow, baptizer in the rivers of s11tng ,e their past. . .

1 hear a voice, of my wife, Rosemarie. I know what It means. I am to be busband and man, strength and solace, lover and companion in the way, ttSting place and summons to joy in the mornmg. . .

Callings are strange things. I think I have heard many v01ces tn many times and places, but it may be that I have heard only One.

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