How Jesus became "Black"

Although there are versions of black Jesus that date back to the 1880's, the black Jesus movement began to take form in the late 1960's and early 1970's. As the African-American civil rights movement gained momentum, blacks began to search for new ways to assert new found pride in black heritage, culture, and ethnicity. A means of doing this was making the Christ black. This, in part, symbolized the ideals promoted by black nationalists, although it also symbolized a new theological tradition arise from the black church. Anthony Pinn, noted theologian and church historian, records in his book on the history of Black Liberation Theology, the theological motivations the drove this move and its implications. Because, God identifies so closely with the oppressed, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised, God, in some ontological sense must be black. By making Jesus black, blacks were able not only to legitimize their heritage and racial identity, but also partake in a very exclusive form participatory worship. The civil rights crisis became not just a political reform campaign, but also the crux of a cosmic war between good and evil. This allowed and empowered many blacks to endure some of the harshest forms racial oppression more capably and fight against the powers that kept them subjugated more vehemently, because on an existential level, they were participated with God in redirecting the affairs of man in ways that conform with God's desire and by extension, experiencing God's divine presence in spite of hard times.