during the Reconstruction era, some white Christians made efforts toward racial reconciliation. Primarily, though, the tendency among whites was toward racial segregation.32 Riggins R. Earl Jr. highlights a critical distinction in the Christian identity of some racists by noting that white deists tended toward racism, while white theists tended to fight against discrimination.33 It was the racial strife of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that led Cone and others to be suspicious of white Christians