The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Cone begins the chapter by pointing out that throughout history, it has been the case that “[m]ost black artists were not church-going Christians” (139). They were, however, deeply concerned people who could see pain and suffering in the world. At the same time, they were still formed by the Christian imagination by way of the culture. Even if artists weren’t practicing and deeply pious Christians, they seemed to be the people most capable of linking the cross and the lynching tree. To Cone, this is a curious thing: “What enabled artists to see what Christian theologians and ministers would not?” (139). What allowed the artistic vision to make this connection when the philosophers, theologians, and preachers so often failed to do so?

Cone’s diagnosis is that it takes a deep imagination to make this connection, an imaginative approach to life that many analytical thinkers do not possess. In their experience, “lynching and Christianity were so much a part of the daily reality of American society that no black artist could avoid wrestling with their meanings and their symbolic relationship to each other” (141). The artist is the one who is most likely to live in the heart of the community and encounter normal, average people, and thus, they are most likely to connect to the average lived experience of those suffering and in need. Cone illustrates his points throughout this chapter by citing countless poems, hymns, and gospel music lyrics to demonstrate the reality of this phenomenon and to illustrate the beautiful and haunting manner in which these topics were addressed by Black artists.

Citing artists and literary greats such as Countee Cullen, Everette Hawkins, W.E.B. Dubois, and Billie Holiday, Cone allows the words of the most influential figures to speak for him. When artists created visual representations of Christ upon the cross “and painted him black, they were also referencing Christ as a lynched victim” (146), drawing out the implications without having to speak even a single word. In a short story by W.E.B. Dubois entitled “The Gospel of Mary Brown,” an illustration ran with the piece depicting a Black Madonna holding a Black Christ child. In their artistic pining for answers and meaning in the heart of a dark world, Black artists and creatives sought meaning from their own lives. Cone notes, “Such spiritual wrestling did not arise out of abstract reasoning but from enduring and confronting the reality of inexplicable suffering” (153).

In the artists’ judgement, no true peace could be achieved by simply ignoring this violent history and sweeping America’s racist past under the rug. On the contrary: the facts needed to be confronted, put on full display, and allowed to purify the future. They recognized that “telling the painful and redeeming truths about their life together” (159) was a prerequisite for a future characterized by harmony and love. The voices of the artists in the Black community proved to be prophetic and required “them to speak truth to power” (165). As Cone notes in his closing words on the topic: “More than anyone, artists demonstrate our understanding of the need to represent the beauty and the terror of our people’s experience” (165).