James Cone

James Cone recently passed away in New York City at the age of 79. Born in Fordyce and reared in Bearden, Arkansas, Cone was a pioneer of black liberation theology. 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 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, which insisted the essence of Christianity lay in the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination. In 2017, Cone was appointed the Bill & Judith Moyers Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he had taught since 1969.