"Is America Possible?"

The beginning of Krista Tippet interviewing Vincent Harding...

Krista Tippett, host: Vincent Harding is the voice I want to hear this week. The conversation I had with him before his death at 82 in 2014 ever after changed the way I think about our democratic experiment. He was a leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement, and he was wise about how the Civil Rights vision might speak to 21st century realities. Just as importantly, Vincent Harding pursued this by way of patient yet passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationship. The Civil Rights Movement, he reminded us, was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a “beloved community,” not merely a tolerant integrated society. Vincent Harding posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst again: “Is America possible?”

Dr. Vincent Harding: How do we work together? How do we talk together in ways that will open up our best capacities and our best gifts? My own feeling that I try to share again and again, Krista, is that when it comes to creating a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious, democratic society, we are still a developing nation.

It's a question I've been asking myself lately.