1. It is altogether fitting that a memorial to the thousands of lynched black Americans should open the same week as Rev. Dr. James H. Cone's death; no theologian did more to condemn these atrocities—to expose in their deaths Christ's own crucified body.
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2. As Cone wrote in his 2011 masterpiece, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, "The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching.”
3. He didn't just name lynching as modern crucifixion, though. Cone also condemned the white joy that accompanied the Jim Crow-era killing of black people—and tied it to white Americans' appalling silence when faced with present state-sanctioned murder of their black siblings.
4. Our nation never atoned for the sins of slavery, never acknowledged how white wealth was built upon black suffering. It hasn't reckoned with lynching and mass incarceration. And white Christians, in particular, still refuse to see their complicity in ongoing crucifixion.
5. Dr. Cone exposed the scandal and hypocrisy of white Christians weeping over Christ's wounds, while ignoring the cry of black blood that emanates from the ground all over our nation.
6. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice does visually what Cone did through words: It forces this country to confront the harsh truth of its past and present. Against a culture so well-practiced at ignoring black pain and death, it will not let you look away.
