Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream Or a Nightmare?

Front Cover
Orbis Books, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 358 pages

This groundbreaking and highly acclaimed work examines the two most influential African-American leaders of this century. While Martin Luther King, Jr., saw America as essentially a dream . . . as yet unfulfilled, Malcolm X viewed America as a realized nightmare. James Cone cuts through superficial assessments of King and Malcolm as polar opposites to reveal two men whose visions are complementary and moving toward convergence.

About the author (2012)

James Hal Cone was born in Fordyce, Arkansas on August 5, 1938. He received a bachelor of divinity degree from Garrett Theological Seminary and a master's degree and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He became a central figure in the development of black liberation theology in the 1960s and 1970s. He spoke about racial inequalities that persisted in the form of economic injustice, mass incarceration, and police shootings. He joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in 1969 and was appointed to the distinguished Charles A. Biggs chair of systematic theology in 1977. He wrote several books including Black Theology and Black Power, A Black Theology of Liberation, Crosscurrents, and The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which received the Grawemeyer Award in Religion in 2018. He died on April 28, 2018 at the age of 79.