Dr. Vincent G. Harding, a civil rights elder, historian, theologian, and peace activist, was a colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. His work for civil rights in the late 1950s and early 1960s was instrumental in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Harding served as the first director of the King Center in Atlanta, which he helped to found, with Coretta Scott King. He published Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero in 1996 while a professor of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. Now retired, his work focuses on the Veterans of Hope Project, which he founded with his wife Rosemarie, to educate students and the public on religion, culture, active democracy, and social change through nonviolent means.