By Kenny Anderson
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| James Cone August 5, 1936 - April 28, 2018 |
Back in the early
1980’s as a young Black community activists I had the pleasure of meeting and
talking with the great Black theologian James Cone who had given a lecture at
Eastern Michigan University. I didn't realize it at the time that me and Brother Cone were born on the same day August 5th.
Since Brother Cone’s recent death (4-28-18) I’ve
been in a deep reflective mode rereading and reanalyzing this now honorable
Ancestor’s great works. Many refer to Brother Cone as the father of Black
Liberation Theology, from my perspective James Cone did not open the door to Black
Liberation Theology he was a dedicated proponent of it; he continued in
the vein of his freedom-fighting liberation theology forefathers the likes of David
Walker who wrote ‘The Appeal’ (1829) and
Henry Highland Garnett who gave one of the greatest speeches ‘An Address To The Slaves Of The United
States’ (1843).
The two greatest Black Christian theologians in my life time
has been Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and James Cone, both articulated that the
message of liberation was at the core of the gospel. Brother
James Cone vigorously articulated throughout his life of God’s radical
identification with the liberation of Black people in the United States. Brother
Cone’s first book was ‘Black Theology & Black Power’ (1969), continuing with
‘A Black Theology of Liberation’ (1970), and ‘God of the Oppressed’ (1975).
Cone’s most recently published book 'The Cross and the Lynching Tree' (2011)
won the 2018 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the following is a quote from the
book:
“While white mob violence against African Americans was an obsession in
the South, it was not limited to that region. White supremacy was and is an
American reality. Whites lynched Blacks in nearly every state, including New
York, Minnesota, and California. Wherever blacks were present in significant
numbers, the threat of being lynched was always real. Blacks had to “watch
their step,” no matter where they were in America. A Black man could be walking
down the road, minding his business, and his life could suddenly change by
meeting a white man or a group of white men or boys who on a whim decided to
have some fun with a Negro; and this could happen in Mississippi or New York,
Arkansas, or Illinois. By the 1890s, lynching fever gripped the South,
spreading like cholera, as white communities made Blacks their primary target,
and torture their focus. Burning the Black victim slowly for hours was the
chief method of torture. Lynching became a white media spectacle, in which
prominent newspapers, like the Atlanta Constitution, announced to the public
the place, date, and time of the expected hanging and burning of Black victims.
Often as many as ten to twenty thousand men, women, and children attended the
event. It was a family affair, a ritual celebration of white supremacy, where
women and children were often given the first opportunity to torture black victims burning Black flesh and cutting off genitals, fingers, toes, and ears as souvenirs.
Postcards were made from the photographs taken of Black victims with white
lynchers and onlookers smiling as they struck a pose for the camera. They were
sold for ten to twenty-five cents to members of the crowd, who then mailed them
to relatives and friends, often with a note saying something like this: “This
is the barbeque we had last night.”
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“The lynching tree so strikingly similar to the cross on Golgotha should
have a prominent place in American images of Jesus’ death. But it does not. In
fact, the lynching tree has no place in American theological reflections bout
Jesus’ cross or in the proclamation of Christian churches about his Passion.
The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse
and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was
clearly a first-century lynching. In the “lynching era,” between 1880 to 1940,
white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner
with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these “Christians”
did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions.” - James Cone
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