In a time when relations between blacks and whites seem at best a minuet in a minefield, Vincent Harding's book Hope and History passionately reminds us that our heritage of racial agony also provided this country's greatest gift to democracy: the post-World War II African-American freedom movement. Mr. Harding's collection of essays about the meaning of that movement -- a sweep encompassing, to his mind, the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, the evolution of black studies and grass-roots black politics -- is a charge to the teachers of America to reconstruct its goals, methods and soul for the latest heirs of our racial malaise.---Diane McWhorter, The New York Times

Each of Harding's essays overflows with parental warmth and quiet optimism, while acknowledging that the struggle for freedom and democracy in the United States and the rest of the world is far from over. Harding is a big-hearted man with great faith in humanity. Hope and History is his own modest, thoughtful charge to his sisters and brothers of all races to carry on the movement.--- Lincoln Alpern, Friends Journal