The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

It was not until I left seminary and began to deal with the “facts” of the black struggle for justice in society that I returned to Niebuhr, especially his Moral Man and Immoral Society. Reading Niebuhr’s reflections on power and self-interest among individuals and collectives in the context of the black liberation struggle was an intellectual revelation. “The white race in America will not admit the Negro to equal rights if it is not forced to do so,” Niebuhr wrote. “Upon this point one may speak with a dogmatism which all history justifies.”[56] What Niebuhr said about love, power, and justice helped me to understand that moral suasion alone would never convince whites to relinquish their supremacy over blacks. Only Black Power could do that, because power, as Frederick Douglass said long before Niebuhr was born, concedes nothing without struggle.