Cone, James Hal

Cone, James Hal

(1938– ) Protestant theologian; born in Fordyce, Ark. He graduated from Philander Smith College (1958), received a Ph.D. from Northwestern, and taught at two small colleges before becoming a professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1976. His A Black Theology of Liberation (1970) contained an angry critique of the presuppositions of white theologians. A more measured statement of his views, God of the Oppressed, followed in 1975; his autobiographical My Soul Looks Back appeared in 1987.