The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

Before Malcolm, the famous anti-lynching poem “If We Must Die” exploded from Jamaican writer Claude McKay during the “Red Summer” of 1919. It was later recited by Winston Churchill, one of Niebuhr’s heroes, in a speech against the Nazis, and it was found on the body of an American soldier killed in action in 1944. McKay, however, was speaking to blacks who were being lynched by whites in northern riots. If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While around us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back![42]