Theologian James Hal Cone was born on August 5, 1938 in Fordyce, Arkansas. James Cone is considered the father of black liberation theology or as a theologian defending the poor and author of painful truths. He is known for his high principles and insightful work on critical topics such as black liberation theology, violence and religion. James was born to Charles and Lucy Cone and although James was born in Fordyce, he grew up in Bearden. He grew up in the “colorful” Bearden neighborhood. Living in Bearden had an impact on James, thinking about the pain and suffering it imposes on African Americans. At the time, Bearden's population was four hundred blacks and eight hundred whites. Cone explains that Bearden's whites tried to make him and his people believe that God created blacks to be servants of whites. White racism has led to “separate but equal” schools, segregated movie theaters and restaurants, beatings and arrests, and political and economic inequality. He never understood how white people could consider themselves good Christians and still do all these things. While living there, he attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Macedonia, which also had a crucial influence in his life because it was there that he met Jesus. When Cone was fifteen, he was called to the ministry and the following year, at the age of sixteen, he became a pastor. During the last three years of high school, James pastored several small churches. Like everyone else, James looked up to someone and the person he most wanted to be like was Martin Luther King Jr. After graduating from Ouachita County Training School, he decided to attend Shorter College of North Little Rock. In 1958, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Philander College, which was also studying these symbols and their interconnection in black history and the soul. The cross and the lynching tree symbolize the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. The lynching tree represents white power and the black plague, the cross represents divine power and black life. . Cone defends the suffering, fear and stress of his people, facing the threat of being hung from a tree and tortured to death by a mob of angry racists. Between 1880 and 1940, many African Americans were lynched, murdered by white mobs for no reason, or charged without trial. Because of this, many black people lived in fear of being the next victims of these expressions of white supremacy. Cone tells stories sometimes in heartbreaking detail that makes you imagine them in your mind.