In a nation with a long shameful history of public lynchings as spectacle and entertainment, George Floyd’s murder has ignited something new: public mourning and public outcry for real justice.
Moss took his film’s title from the book by the late Rev. Dr. James Cone, the founder of Black liberation theology and a tireless crusader against racial terrorism and other forms of injustice.
When Rev. Cone spoke to an audience at the Children’s Defense Fund’s Proctor Institute about The Cross and the Lynching Tree he said, “This book is my prayer, my invocation to God on behalf of Black people, in the hope that the nearly four centuries of Black suffering will be redemptive for our children and grandchildren, revealing to them the beauty in their tragic path, and also empowering them to continue to fight, to resist the violence of white supremacy.
Witnessing Floyd’s murder has proven to be an inflection point in the fight against the violence of white supremacy, unleashing waves of pain and anger and a deep, deep cry for justice that cannot be stopped or silenced.
It has become a cry for Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, and generations of Black men, women and children lynched and murdered with no arrests, convictions, or justice.
