A Legacy of Peace
by Meta Commerse
Dr. Vincent Harding died last week, at age 82. When I heard this news, I touched my body to be sure that I was awake.
Two days before that Sam Greenlee had died. This week Maya Angelou died. Writers, thinkers, teachers, activists, all. My elders. That’s how I think of them, for they in their generation – that of my parents, also known as The Silent Generation – came forth with words, commitment, and action, now their legacy, to guide us, inform us, and help us to change the world.
It’s a world that needs changing perhaps now more than at any other time. There is so much about that that I would say in this piece that the constraints of time and space will not allow. Let me say that Harding’s voice was one that I adored because, as an aide to Dr. King, as an architect of their work, he personally carried the annals of what we know as the Civil Rights Movement in his heart. And, in the decades since Dr. King’s assassination, he has let the juice of those experiences become wine, become wise teachings of an ever broadening and deepening perspective to make it not only global or boundless in place, but prophetic and boundless in time.
In his most recent radio interviews with Krista Tippett on National Public Radio, these rich conversations represented that era of change in a way most relevant, living, and vital today. He was loving, forgiving, and inclusive in his language, although, as an African American, he never lost sight of his sense of history and of history’s purpose. Still, he was not only African American. He was a human being, and the same, peaceful, light-hearted resolve that we hear in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and from the late Nelson Mandela, we hear in Harding. It is as if he said in essence, “I know that my best work has been done now. I am free in my mind, in my sense of who I am, in my sense of who you are, in my sense of who and what America is.”
To exemplify, to teach, to inspire this kind of resolve and peace when all is said and done is to have transcended the worst pain and disappointment of the struggle; to have extracted and applied the lessons and treasures is what Harding did. As an elder, father, pillar of the movement, he never ceased pointing to the miraculous strides and sacrifices that had been made while placing them and that rich history in the context of the struggles we face today and uplifting and reminding our youth of the importance of their own hopes and dreams, of what work is still undone, what change is still possible for us to achieve.
For our wise elders, Greenlee, Angelou, Harding, death’s portal stands between them and us now, as they have joined the ancestral realm. It is that door through which we must all pass. Let us learn well from their teachings and put to good use the rich legacy they leave to us. Let us take our inheritance and create the beloved community they dreamed of, the beloved community that lives behind our eyes, the beloved community that cries out from the very marrow of our bones to be made real right where we stand.
Maya Angelou: 1928-2014
Maya Angelou, one of America’s most celebrated poets, novelists and civil-rights activists will be greatly missed. Angelou, who served on two presidential committees and was recognized with numerous awards, was 86 years old.
Meta Commerse, M.A., M.F.A., C.W.P. is Director of Story Medicine of Asheville, a unique healing program. She is also an author, activist, and public speaker. Meta is also a professor of English and History at Haywood Community College. Her novel, The Mending Time, is forthcoming. Meta is available to speak to your group on the healing power of story and other topics of interest. Contact her on Facebook.
