The thing about tropes in movies and literature is that they are often identified and become part of the legend of a work without the intent of the autor.

Whether intended by Romero or not, according to the documentary A Century of Black Cinema (and other related print works) the film had a profound impact on many African American viewers of the time .. because of the lead, because of the story, etc.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1381270/

Whether it was the original plan or not, by the time the movie gets to the end credits the parallels to a lynching are incredibly explicit.

I'd like to put in a rec for https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053454/ "The World, the Flesh and the Devil", which is an apocalypse movie with a slightly different premise: what if the only survivors of an apocalypse in apartheit 1950s America were a black man and a white woman? Contains some great shots of deserted New York and some very intense performances.