The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

When Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper who became a great civil rights heroine, sought to inspire blacks to risk their lives for justice in Mississippi, she turned to the cross and embellished it with her religious imagination. She told blacks who were too afraid to fight for their rights: “When Simon Cyrene was helping Christ to bear his cross up the hill, [Simon] said: ‘Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross for me. This consecrated cross I’ll bear, till death shall set me free. And then go home a crown to wear, for there’s a crown for me.’ ”[55] Like other poor blacks, Hamer had no access to sophisticated biblical studies, and thus used a familiar evangelical hymn, popular in the black churches, to make her point about our responsibility to become an agent of change. Her hermeneutics were shaped by the spirituals and the tradition of gospel hymns and her involvement in the black freedom struggle. Yet thousands of poor blacks were inspired by her reflection and followed her throughout Mississippi, many to endure jail, beatings, and even death. Where is a similar example of motivation and courage among religion and theology professors and students in our institutions of higher learning? Yet Hamer did not embrace the cross uncritically. She was aware of its dangers. “We have always been taught,” she said, “that we had to suffer as Christ suffered. He was killed and all of his followers were...