Rosemarie Freeney Harding (1930–2004) was an organizer, teacher, social worker, and cofounder of Mennonite House, an early integrated community center in Atlanta. She also cofounded the Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology.
Rachel Elizabeth Harding, daughter of Rosemarie Freeney Harding and Vincent Harding, is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Spiritual Traditions in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Denver, and author of
Rosemarie Freeney Harding (1930–2004) was an organizer, teacher, social worker, and cofounder of Mennonite House, an early integrated community center in Atlanta. She also cofounded the Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology.
Rachel Elizabeth Harding, daughter of Rosemarie Freeney Harding and Vincent Harding, is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Spiritual Traditions in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Denver, and author of
Ground
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Published:April 2015
Poem about Rosemarie’s great-grandmother (Mariah Grant/Grandma Rye, an ex-slave) and the rituals and prayers she created for healing.
Relates Mariah Grant’s personal history and some of her personality traits. This chapter helps explain the origins of the mystic and healing traditions in the family, and draws parallels between Grandma Rye and Rosemarie’s own mother, Mama Freeney. Through Grandma Rye’s story, the chapter also speculates about the transformation from the practice of African religions to the acceptance of Christianity among early generations of African Americans.
Recounts Rosemarie’s parents’ mixed reaction when she and her husband decided to move to Georgia (which the family had left in the 1920s, before Rosemarie was born). The chapter details the violence that sent the family north during the Great Migration, the sense of homecoming Rosemarie experienced when she returned in the early 1960s, and the civil rights work and movement colleagues Rosemarie joined in the South.
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