The Cross And The Lynching Tree

Fame Theologian Dr. James H. Cone chronicles this southern christian phenomenon in terms of genderless aims. Cone writes (p.120). “When a mob in Valdosta, Georgia, in 1918 failed to find Sidney Johnson, accused of murdering his boss, Hampton Smith, they decided to lynch another Black man, Haynes Turner. Who was known to dislike Smith. Turner’s wife, Mary who was eight months pregnant, protested vehemently and vowed to seek justice for her husband’s lynching. The Sheriff, in turn arrested her and then gave her to the mob.  In the presence of a crowd that included women and children, Mary Turner was “stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.”

Chapter 5 of the Cross and the Lynching Tree.