The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

Theologian John Macquarrie is among those who have compared King’s decision to go to Memphis with Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem. His analogy is a telling one. Seeking to explain “the voluntary element in the death of Jesus,” Macquarrie wrote, There is an example in recent history which appears to me to provide an illuminating parallel. In the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King went to the city of Memphis to help resolve a bitter labour dispute with racial overtones. He did not go to Memphis to die, but in the hope he could help change people’s minds there. As we all know, he was assassinated in the course of his visit, and many people look on his death as martyrdom. Though he had not gone there to die, and though his mind may well have been preoccupied with hopes for the future rather than with the prospect of death, he had known very well for a long time that death was a constant possibility so