Remnants

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 Associate Professor of Indigenous Spiritual Traditions in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Denver, and author of A Refuge in Thunder: CandomblÉ and Alternative Spaces of Blackness.

• Foreword: Daughter's PrÉcis / Rachel E. Harding  ix1. (the light)  1I. Ground  52. Rye's Rites (poem)  73. Grandma Rye  94. There Was a Tree in Starkville . . .  155. Daddy's Mark  216. Joe Daniels: Getting Unruly  247. The Side of the Road  298. Papa's Girl  32II. North  419. Snow and Spring in Woodlawn  4310. Shirley Darden  5211. Brother Bud's Death  5412. Death, Dreams, and Secrecy: Things We Carried  5713. Season  6314. Elegant Cousins and Original Beauty  6615. Warmth  7116. Altgeld Gardens  7517. Hot Rolls (short fiction)  8218. Looking for Work  9219. The Nursing Test  9620.  In Loco Parentis (short fiction)  9721. Mama Freeney and the Haints  10722. Height  113III. South  11523. Hospitality, Haints, and Healing: African American Indigenous Religion and Activism  11724. Mennonite House in Atlanta  12725. The Next-Door Neighbor  13726. Traveling for the Movement  14027. Koinonia Farm: Cultivating Conviction  14428. A Radical Compassion: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Clarence Jordan, and Marion King-Jackson  15529. A Song in the Time of Dying: A Memory of Bernice Johnson Reagon  16330. The Blood House (a story outline)  16531. Spirit and Struggle: The Mysticism of the Movement  168IV. The Dharamsala Notebook  17932. Sunrise after Delhi (poem)  18133. The Dharamsala Notebook I  18234. The Dharamsala Notebook II  194V. Bunting 19935. The Bunting  20136. The Workshops and Retreats: Ritual, Remembering, and Medicine  217VI. The Pachamama Circle  22737. Pachamama Circle I: Rachel's Dream  22938. Pachamama Circle II: Sue Bailey Thurman and the Harriets  23139. Pachamama Circle III: A Choreography of Mothering  23740. Mama and the Gods  241AfterWords  24341. Fugida: Poem for OyÁ  24542. Class Visits: Love, White Southerners, and Black Exceptionalism  24743. A Little Wind  26544. (the Call)  268Appendix: Rosemarie's Genealogies  271Acknowledgments  283Index  287

“[A] spirited compilation of ecumenical history, folk wisdom, fiction, memoir, and poetry. . . . The central message of Harding’s life is abiding love, passed down through generations, strengthened in the aftermath of grief, racial terrorism, and trauma. The book also tells the unusual story of Mennonite House, a pioneering center of interracial activism in Atlanta co-founded by Harding and her husband, and offers other insights that shape its powerful narrative.” (Publishers Weekly) "Co-authored by Rachel and her late mother, [Remnants] is in its very composition both intimate and collaborative. ...It is a book of returning to the source as a resource for the future and present. There are lessons about human connection and resilience, and our capacities to be better to one another. Out of the particulars of these two lives, a window opens into Black life more broadly, in all of its complexity and interconnectedness with the vast networks of humanity." - Imani Perry (Public Books) "Remnants will appeal to those who are interested in religion and social transformation. Social change advocates, justice seekers, grassroots organizers, nonviolent revolutionaries, race critical theorists, theologians, clergy, historians, womanists, ethicists, ancl educators will all find gems within Remnants.... Remnants provides hope for a better humanity." - Dean J. Johnson (Mennonite Quarterly Review)