The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

concluded his letter with a statement that surprised me: “I think he will be an excellent man on your faculty.”[57] Niebuhr’s affirmation of my presence at Union meant much to me then and still means much to me today. I wish that my time at Union had coincided with Niebuhr’s. I would have enjoyed engaging race and theology with him as I did with John Bennett, Paul Lehmann, Tom Driver, Roger Shinn, Beverly Harrison, and other members of the Union faculty. I would have granted some validity to his criticism of the Barth influence, which is less today. But the critique about integration is another matter. It would have been challenging to engage him on my failure to appreciate the progress in integration. What most whites call “integration” (or in the language of today, diversity) is often merely “tokenism.” There is very little justice in any educational