The Cross and the Lynching Tree

There is a book called The Cross and the Lynching Tree, wriitten late in the career of Professor James Cone, a Black scholar who grew up in the segregated American South. He was the first Black doctoral student to be admitted to Union Theological Seminary and he was a leading voice in critiquing the racist culture of the US.

While The Cross and the Lynching Tree is still in the precarious pile of "to be read" books next to my bed I know that is a thoughtful  reflection on the gruesome practice of execution called lynching, the use of White power to subjugate Black people, compared with the cross of Jesus, which subverts that power and sets Black people free. 

Did you hear that the US Senate just passed legislation to criminalize lynching? I was gobsmacked to discover that this vote took place in 2022, and only after hundreds of failed attempts to bring it about. Here is a segment of the NPR report: 

 The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Monday that criminalizes lynching and make it punishable by up to 30 years in prison. It sailed through the House of Representatives last month, and President Biden is expected to sign it.While it eased through both chambers of Congress this time with virtually no opposition, the path to passage took more than 100 years and 200 failed attempts.

Under the bill, named the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act after the 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was lynched while visiting family in Mississippi, a crime can be prosecuted as a lynching when a hate crime results in a death or injury, said Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., a longtime sponsor of the legislation."Lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy," Rush said in a statement Monday evening. "Unanimous Senate passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act sends a clear and emphatic message that our nation will no longer ignore this shameful chapter of our history and that the full force of the U.S. federal government will always be brought to bear against those who commit this heinous act."

There is now a museum in Alabama which commemorates the 4,400 documented instances of the lynching in various forms which took place well past the middle of the 20th century. https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/

There has been lots of unjustified criticism of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement because it has been so vocal about the deaths of Black people, including George Floyd and so many others. These are effectively lynchings, even though they are too often at the hands of police. Who wants to be told that there is systemic racism in society which still veers into White Supremacy? 

If we imagine that lethal racism doesn't happen in Canada, read Desmond Cole's book The Skin We're In. Or read the racist and violent statements made by some organizers & participants in the so-called Freedom Convoy which occupied Ottawa. 

As we make our way thrugh Lent to Holy Week and Good Friday we must take up our own crosses and follow Jesus in decrying racism wherever we see it and repent of our own discriminatory biases. 

The Dawn Chorus spoke to my heavy heart this Lenten morning. My Groundling blog today https://groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-dawn-chorus-and-lent.html

This stained-glass window was donated to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham by the people of Wales after the church was bombed in 1963. (Solomon Crenshaw, For The Birmingham Times)