Survey of The Cross and the Lynching Tree (part 2)

Chapter One – Nobody Knows De Trouble I See

“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” (Acts 10:39)

The paradox of a crucified savior lies at the heard of Christianity. Crucifixion in the Roman world was recognized as the particular form of execution reserved by the Roman Empire for insurrectionists and rebels. It was a public spectacle accompanied by torture and shame. This required explanation as the early church worshiped a crucified criminal (or a blasphemer if you were Jewish). The cross however is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word.

That God could “make a way out of no way” in Jesus’ cross was truly absurd to the intellect, yet profoundly real in the souls of black folk. Enslaved blacks who first heard the gospel message seized on the power of the cross. Christ crucified manifested God’s loving and liberating presence in the contradictions of black life that empowered them to believe that ultimately at the end of times, they would not be defeated by the “troubles of this world,” no matter how great and painful their suffering. There was no place for the proud and mighty, for people who think that God called them to rule over others. The cross was God’s critique of power – white power – with powerless love, snatching victory out of defeat.

The violence and oppression of white supremacy took different forms and employed different means to achieve the same end: the subjugation of black people. How would hope be found in the world of Jim Crow segregation?

The lynching tree joined the cross as emotionally charged symbols that represented both death and the promise of redemption, judgment and the offer of mercy, suffering and the power of hope. Both the cross and the lynching tree represented a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine final meaning.

Cone spends several pages detailing the accounts of lynching throughout America, estimates of nearly five thousand victims. (He gives a brief history of the term and the variety of people groups that have suffered the fate of lynching). The focus of lynching upon the black community arose after slavery was ended and Reconstruction began. Many southern whites were furious at the very idea of granting ex-slaves social, political, and economic freedom. White supremacists felt insulted by the suggestion that whites and blacks might work together as equals. This extended to churches, colleges, universities all the way to the political and social life of the nation. Southern whites were not going to allow their ex-slaves to associate with them as equals. Lynching became the means to keep ex-slaves subservient. A black person could be lynched for any perceived insult to whites. The calls to do something about lynching was ignored by ministers, congressmen, senators, judges and even presidents. Supreme Court Justice Roger B Taney (the namesake of Taney County, MO) stated in the Dred Scott decision that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”).

Lynching wasn’t limited to the South. Whites lynched blacks in nearly every state (Boone County, MO).

This wasn’t done in secret. Papers 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. These events could not have happened without widespread knowledge and the explicit sanction of local and state authorities and with tacit approval from the federal government, members of the white media, churches and university.

Cone shows how the music of the blues and religion offered the chief weapons of resistance against white supremacy. These cultural institutions affirmed their humanity and offered sources of hope that there was more to life than what one encountered daily in the white man’s world. If the blues offered an affirmation of humanity, religion offered a way for black people to find hope. African Americans embraced the story of Jesus, the crucified Christ, whose death they claimed paradoxically game them life, just as God resurrected him in the life of the earliest Christian community. The cross (with the specter of the lynching tree always present) symbolized divine power and “black life” – God overcoming the power of sin and death.

In a hymn like “Nobody Knows”, the source of hope is Jesus, for he is a friend who knows about the trouble of his little ones, and he is the reason for their “Hallelujah.” His divine presence is the most important message about black existence.  The spirituals, gospel songs, and hymns focused on how Jesus achieved salvation for the least through his solidarity with them even unto death. The cross was the foundation on which their faith was built.

In the mystery of God’s revelation, black Christians believed that just knowing that Jesus went through an experience of suffering in a manner similar to theirs gave them faith that God was with them, even in suffering on lynching trees, just as God was present with Jesus in suffering on the cross. The more black people struggled against white supremacy, the more they found in the cross the spiritual power to resist the violence they so often suffered.

With the deck stacked against them in so many regards, what could black people do except to fight with cultural and religious power and pray that God would support them in their struggle for freedom? Black people stretched their hands to God because they had nowhere else to turn. Because of their experience of arbitrary violence, the cross was and is a redeeming and comforting image for many black Christians. If the God of Jesus’ cross is found among the least, the crucified people of the world, then God is also found among those lynched in American history.

Cone believes that the cross speaks to oppressed people in ways that Jesus’ life, teachings, and even his resurrection do not. The cross places God in the midst of crucified people, in the midst of people who are hung, shot, burned and tortured.

Cone surveys a few of the questions that black pastors and theologians had about the Bible and the Christian experience. Why, after 300 plus years of oppression, was the liberator (seemingly) nowhere to be found? Cone then acknowledges that the cross does something that other cultural expressions do not do. Even though God seemed to be silent during this period, it was not the blues or other art that spurred resistance. The blues and the juke joint did not lead to an organized political resistance against white supremacy. It was the spirituals and the church, with Jesus’ cross at the heart of its faith which gave birth to the black freedom movement that reached its peak in the civil rights era during the 1950s and 60s. The spirituals were the soul of the movement, giving people courage to fight, and the church was its anchor, deepening its faith in the coming freedom for all. The blues sent people traveling, roaming, looking for a woman or a man to soothe one’s aching human heart. But it was Jesus’ cross that sent people protesting in the streets, seeking to change the social structures of racial oppression.