Because of their experience of arbitrary violence, the cross was and is a redeeming and comforting image for many black Christians. If the God of Jesus’ cross is found among the least, the crucified people of the world, then God is also found among those lynched in American history.

To keep hope alive was not easy for African Americans, facing state-endorsed terrorism nearly everywhere in America. Trouble followed them wherever they went… keeping them awake and stalking them in nightmares, like a wild beast, waiting to attack its prey. (The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone)

The cross of Christ was comfort in the days of Jim Crow and lynching. The comfort was the cross of Jesus Christ. The deepest root was the cross. More sermons and more songs were heard about the cross than anything else in this part of American Black Church History.