At a moment of so much uncertainty over where our nation is headed and what national unity really means, I return again to the wise words of my late friend Dr. Vincent Harding, the revered historian, theologian, social justice activist, and visionary who never lost sight of the “beloved community” his dear colleague Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed our nation and world could become. At a Children’s Defense Fund conference town hall on his 81st birthday, Dr. Harding told us he believed America was a wounded nation, but despite so many years of struggle, he remained convinced America could and must get better. He urged all of us to commit ourselves to healing America and making our country what it should be and shared a line he had heard a West African poet recite: “‘I am a citizen of a country that does not yet exist.’”
The poet was speaking about his homeland, which was going through political turmoil on the road to independence. But my dear brother Vincent said it also applied to our national spiritual and moral crisis in America: “We are citizens of a country that we still have to create—a just country, a compassionate country, a forgiving country, a multiracial, multi-religious country, a joyful country that cares about its children and about its elders, that cares about itself and about the world, that cares about what the earth needs as well as what individual people need…I am, you are, a citizen of a country that does not yet exist,” he continued, “and that badly needs to exist.”
He drew a comparison to the words of the brilliant poet Langston Hughes in “Let America Be America Again.” That poem celebrates the poor, working class, and immigrant Americans from all backgrounds and colors who have always been the farmers, factory workers, and laborers on whose backs America was built, but who generation after generation have been “tangled in that ancient endless chain/Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! / Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! / Of work the men! Of take the pay! / Of owning everything for one’s own greed!” Vincent Harding borrowed Hughes’s refrain— “America never was America to me.” He said: “We can always stop there and complain and complain and complain. ‘You’ve never been America to me.’ But remember, Langston did not stop there. ‘America, you’ve never been America to me. But I swear this oath—you will be!’ I want you, those who are not afraid to swear oaths, to swear that oath for yourself, for your children, and for your old uncle here. You will be, America! You will be what you could be. You will be what you should be, and I am going to give my life to the working for that.”
I swear this oath—you will be! Those of us who share the vision for a just, compassionate, multiracial, joyful nation that cares for children and elders, itself and the rest of the world, and the earth’s needs along with individual needs must never stop working alongside children and young people to make that America a reality. That is the nation where young people are already telling us they desperately want to live. We are citizens of a country that does not yet exist, but it is up to us to finally create it and make it a just and hopeful land for all.