Black Power- James Cone

The black power movement, a new burst of African American activism that emerged in the late 1960s, has some intriguing links to Arkansas. James Cone, a pioneer of black liberation theology, was born in Fordyce and reared in Bearden, Arkansas. He attended Shorter College in North Little Rock and graduated from Little Rock’s Philander Smith College in 1958. He went on to earn his doctorate at Illinois’ Northwestern University in 1965. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power and his 1975 book God of the Oppressed laid the foundations for black liberation theology that insisted the essence of Christianity rested in the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination. Since 1987 Cone has served as Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. I’m John Kirk of the UALR History Department and this has been an Arkansas moment.