The Golden Age of 24 July 1929 answered the question "Is there anything in the Bible that reveals the origin of the Negro?" by saying that Noah's curse on Canaan "pictured the future of the Colored race", that black people "have been and are a race of servants", and that "there is no servant in the world as good as a good Colored servant".

Claim ID claim-attitudes-race-1929-curse-of-canaan-originConcerns 24 July 1929Explicit statement

Explicit statement · 24 July 1929 Verified

The Golden Age of 24 July 1929 answered the question "Is there anything in the Bible that reveals the origin of the Negro?" by saying that Noah's curse on Canaan "pictured the future of the Colored race", that black people "have been and are a race of servants", and that "there is no servant in the world as good as a good Colored servant". Source: The Golden Age, 24 July 1929

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The Watchtower of 15 October 1956 rejected the curse-of-Canaan argument when a Baptist body used it, and Awake! of 8 October 1977 devoted an article to refuting it — "blacks are not, and never were, cursed by God" — attributing the teaching to "religious leaders", "church commentators" and "churchmen". Neither article mentions that the organisation’s own magazine had printed it in 1929.

Show the evidence (1 source)

Primary JW publication Verified

The Golden Age, “Bible Questions and Answers”

24 July 1929 · p.702 · Woodworth, Knorr and Martin, 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, New York

“Question: Is there anything in the Bible that reveals the origin of the Negro? Answer: It is generally believed that the curse which Noah pronounced upon Canaan was the origin of the Black race. Certain it is that when Noah said, "Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren," he pictured the future of the Colored race. They have been and are a race of servants, but now in the dawn of the twentieth century, we are all coming to see this matter of service in its true light and to find that the only real joy in life is in serving others; not bossing them. There is no servant in the world as good as a good Colored servant, and the joy that he gets from rendering faithful service is one of the purest joys there is in the world.”

The item is the second of two answers in the magazine’s unsigned "Bible Questions and Answers" department, immediately below an answer about James 5:14 and immediately above the children’s serial, which begins on the next page. It carries no by-line and no qualification.

Scan of original (opens in new tab)

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read page by page from the item’s djvu.xml on 19 September 2026 and re-checked independently. The passage stands on the leaf whose own printed folio reads “702”; the leaves mapped to pages 699 and 701 carry the running head “JULY 24, 1929”, and page 703 begins “The Children’s Own Radio Story”. Date, page and wording all confirmed against the scan’s text, and the commonly cited page 702 is correct. The issue’s masthead block reads “Published every other Wednesday at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. … by WOODWORTH, KNORR & MARTIN”.

Scan provenance. Internet Archive item “Golden Age 1929”, the bound volume for that year. Printed page numbers taken from the item's page_numbers.json joined to the djvu.xml leaves and checked against the running heads “JULY 24, 1929” on the adjacent pages.

Corroborated by. src-race-zwt-1902-0715-ham-canaan

Notes. The item carries no by-line and no qualification. It stands between an answer about James 5:14 and the children’s serial that begins on the next page.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-race-ga-1929-0724-origin-of-negro

Claim page Correct or update

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-attitudes-race-1929-curse-of-canaan-origin/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.

Die Aussage und ihre Belege

The Golden Age, “Bible Questions and Answers”