The Cross and the Lynching Tree

In the third chapter, the author James Cone explores his relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights legacy that he left behind. In the wake of the Emmett Till lynching, the civil rights movement saw an upswell of support like never before, coming in the wake of an event so shocking that “Black people throughout the country were outraged that white racists would stoop so low as to lynch an innocent child” (105). The murder of Emmett Till proved to be a breaking point for the movement not only because of the horrific nature of the act but in the way that it was leveraged by Emmett’s mother to attempt to put a real human face on the racism and violence that had been their experience every single day.

Emmett’s mother “insisted that the sealed casket be opened for a three-day viewing” (105-106) so that the world could see precisely what had been done to her child: “She exposed white brutality and black faith to the world and, significantly, expressed a parallel meaning between her son’s lynching and the crucifixion of Jesus” (106). By allowing the public to see the aftermath of Emmett’s violent end, his mother was doing the only thing she knew to do to offer up a peaceful protest, allowing the shame of his attackers to manifest to the world. As an additional note, the open-casket display didn’t just shame and convict his murderers, but it also put the thought of recognition and conviction into the heart of every young Black man in the country that it easily could have been any of them. The author recounts having this thought: “I remember saying to myself, ‘Emmet Till could have been me!’ My older brothers felt the same way, as did most young males we knew” (106).

Just a few months after the lynching of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks staged her protest by refusing to give up her seat on the bus, and it became obvious that a new era was dawning. Right into the midst of this stepped Martin Luther King Jr., who “came to embody this faith, courage, and intelligence” (109) present in the Black community. What made MLK different was that he wasn’t content to discuss the issues as an academic, at the theoretical level, even though he was more than equipped to do so intellectually. He brought the theory out onto the streets, truly living the truth by which he was convicted. What made MLK’s teaching and example even more radical was that he consistently advocated for peace and nonviolence, even in the wake of evident injustice and aggression; he realized that “love and the cross lead to nonviolence and reconciliation” (110). What Reinhold Niebuhr had deemed impossible—bringing radical love into existence as a historical reality—MLK believed was possible, and it was what motivated him from the start.

The theological underpinning of MLK’s message was the cross, for “the cross spoke to the lives of blacks because the likeness between the cross and the lynching tree created an eerie feeling of mystery and the supernatural” (115). The cross was the most powerful symbol to raise as a standard because it stood for something wholly transcendent, which could unite all their cares, fears, and sorrows universally. Even when MLK suffered injustice, harassment, and aggression, he refused to stop, even when he feared for his own life, convinced that sooner or later, he would be killed for his pursuit of justice. For King, “the cross represented the depth of God’s love for suffering humanity, and an answer to the deadly cycle of violence and hatred” (125), and it motivated him to continue his particular mode of nonviolent noncompliance. He was convinced he would be killed, but his faith gave him the courage and the motivation to keep going.

When reflecting on the events that sparked the civil rights movement, it is almost impossible to see any good in its initial causes. The death of an innocent child, especially a consciously willed and violent death like that of Emmett Till, is a grave obstacle to faith; in fact, the suffering of the innocent has been one of the principal objections to belief in God or a moral universe for thousands of years. As Cone notes, it’s one thing to wax philosophical in a discussion of the pain, suffering, and death of the innocent in the ivory tower of academia, but it is quite another to “to talk about the death of innocent children who were killed while worshiping Jesus” (128) in the wake of it happening in your lived experience. In attempting to understand the ancient Christian understanding of redemptive suffering, Cone admits that he was slow to understand its depths, and it is only in the acknowledgment of Jesus’ solidarity with those who suffer that any of it can make sense.