Dr. Cone traced the turning point in his career, inspiring him to challenge white theologians more forcefully, to the Detroit riots of 1967 — clashes between mostly black Detroit residents and the police that resulted in the deaths of 43 people.

“I heard the voices of black blood crying out to God and to humanity,” he said last year.

His 1969 book, “Black Theology & Black Power,” is considered the founding text of black liberation theology. In an introduction to an updated edition in 1997, Dr. Cone wrote that he had “wanted to speak on behalf of the voiceless black masses in the name of Jesus, whose Gospel I believed had been greatly distorted by the preaching theology of white churches.”

As a professor, he encouraged his students to pursue their own ideas rather than imitating his, said the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, an author, priest and the dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary.

Image Dr. Cone’s 1969 book “Black Theology & Black Power” is considered the founding text of black liberation theology.

“He gave many of us the opportunity to study and find our own theological voice at a time when we would not have had an opportunity to do so,” Dr. Douglas said.

Black liberation theology made headlines in 2008 when it became known that one of its proponents, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., had been a minister for Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate.

Mr. Obama’s past association with Mr. Wright became a campaign liability when Mr. Wright was quoted as having suggested that the United States was attacked on Sept. 11 because it had engaged in terrorism of its own, and that the government could have used the virus that causes AIDS as a tool for genocide against minorities. Mr. Obama renounced Mr. Wright in April 2008.