Lisa Sharon Harper challenged her audience in Emerson Suites to imagine a world where children don’t have to worry about school shootings or where their next meal will come from; where everyone goes to the doctor regularly for check-ups and people don’t lock their doors. Then she said to imagine that every person in that world is African-American.

Harper is the senior mobilizing director for Sojourners, a national, Christian-oriented organization which calls for action for social and racial justice. During her March 3 lecture in Emerson Suites, she said the imaginative task is difficult for some people because many lack the imagination to think of a world where race-based poverty is not a constant war.