James Hal Cone Quotes
One can lynch a person without a rope or tree.
Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Orbis Books, 2011, p. 163.
William Z. Foster, the 1928 communist presidential candidate, was arrested because his party’s leaflet contained this “inflammatory” slogan.
In 1848 a pro-slavery mob in Washington DC Gamaliel Bailey's anti-slavery publication, The National Era, which soon thereafter was the publisher of the serialized Uncle Tom's Cabin. Senator John P. Hale introduced a bill in the Senate outlawing rioting in the District of Columbia. The Southern Senators objected violently and this served as a catalyst for one the for the most extensive and bitter public debate that had ever been held on the slavery issue.
The Muslim Brotherhood had won the Presidency in the first Egyptian democratic election shortly after the ouster of Mubarak when they were the only party that was organized. However, after one year of government, their performance was so bad that critics like El Baradei offered strong public criticism—especially of the preoccupation with Islam with little government attention given to freedom, human rights, and the economy which was in terrible shape. This triggered many protests and demonstrations in Tahrir Square where intimidation of protesters was accomplished by beatings and lynchings in the midst of a large number of Brotherhood supporters who would infiltrate the crowd. The Islamic fundamentalists were particularly harsh on female protesters who were beaten, had their clothes ripped off, and in many cases raped. A few days after this article was published there was an insurrection of huge crowds of Egyptians and the Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi was forced to resign.
In 1911 the citizens of Honea Path, SC, led by Joshua W. Ashleigh, the State Legislator representing the district and his son, the editor of the local newspaper, dismembered and lynched a Black man, Willis Jackson. Some South Carolinians were distressed and asked the Governor to initiate and investigation. See his later statement on lynching in 1930.
Reacting to the slogan, "Impeach Earl Warren:"
16 white miners were charged with riot, arson, murder and robbery. However the local white jury acquitted them all. Southern white murders of Blacks were not the only terrible crimes that were openly committed with impunity.
James Hal Cone (1938–2018) was an American theologian, best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus. Cone's work was influential from the time of the book's publication, and his work remains influential today. His work has been both used and critiqued inside and outside the African-American theological community. He was the Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary until his death.
