The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

While the Senate refused to enact a federal law against lynching, black artists relentlessly exposed the political and religious hypocrisy of lynching in America. In competition with each other, both the NAACP and the Communist Party sponsored anti-lynching exhibitions in 1935 featuring drawings, paintings, and sculptures by many participating artists. Some artists, including whites, Mexicans, Japanese, as well as blacks, displayed their work in both exhibitions. Generally, non-black artists addressed a white audience and focused mostly on the brutality against black bodies and the racism of the lynchers. Black artists usually addressed the black community and thus tended to avoid white brutality and the helplessness of the black victims. They focused more on black subjectivity—the dignity of the black victims and the suffering of the black community, and they were much more likely to allude to the spiritual agency of black people through parallels with the suffering of Christ.