I also found similar themes of noble death in "As the Lord Lives, He is One of Our Mother's Children" and "If We Must Die," so I would agree that yes, this theme connected the two pieces. As soon as I read the description of death in "If We Must Die" as being surround by barking "mad and hungry dogs," I thought of "As the Lord Lives..." and the hanging of Jones. As the story progresses, we learn that Stone (also known as 'Gentleman Jim') fears being found and suffering the same death as Jones, which has haunted him since the day that it happened and caused him to go into hiding. He also comments that he'll "never be taken alive," which I interpreted to mean that he would rather be caught already dead by this angry mob than have to suffer the public display of brutal death that he had watched Jim endure.
Another thought that I had while reading these works was that their authors, Pauline Hopkins and Claude McKay, wrote them thirty years apart. This was sad in a sense that the extreme prejudice that was shown toward African-Americans at the turn of the twentieth century and portrayed in "As the Lord Lives..." was still continuing thirty years later when Claude McKay composed his poems, including "If We Must Die." This is an example of how a theme, in this case noble death, can be carried into the literature of the next generation.
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