Searches of the organisation’s own online library produced no article in which it withdraws, corrects or acknowledges the specific statements about race published in its literature before 1950. Its 1956 rebuttal of the curse-of-Canaan argument answers a Baptist resolution, and its 1977 article "Are Blacks Cursed by God?" attributes that teaching to "religious leaders", "church commentators" and "churchmen"; neither mentions that the same argument had appeared in The Golden Age in 1929.
Claim ID claim-attitudes-race-no-withdrawal-of-earlier-statementsConcerns 19 September 2026Context
Searches of the organisation’s own online library produced no article in which it withdraws, corrects or acknowledges the specific statements about race published in its literature before 1950. Its 1956 rebuttal of the curse-of-Canaan argument answers a Baptist resolution, and its 1977 article "Are Blacks Cursed by God?" attributes that teaching to "religious leaders", "church commentators" and "churchmen"; neither mentions that the same argument had appeared in The Golden Age in 1929. Source: The Watchtower, 15 October 1956Source: Awake!, 8 October 1977Source: The Golden Age, 24 July 1929Source: The Watchtower, 15 December 2011
The organisation’s position or later explanation: The organisation has published a first-person account acknowledging that its American congregations, circuits and districts were once racially separate, and a first-person account of its congregations operating under apartheid, but neither addresses what its magazines taught about race.
15 October 1956 · pp.611-613 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
“Some people argue that the colored race was sentenced to a secondary status by Noah after the flood, in that he cursed Canaan, the son of Ham. However, the facts show that the colored race sprang not from Ham's son Canaan but from his son Cush. Therefore not even Noah's curse as recorded at Genesis 9:26, 27 can be used to argue that God is responsible for segregation. … Far from teaching segregation, the Bible condemns it.”
The article answers a 1956 resolution of the American Baptist Association which had put God on the side of segregation. It rejects each of the resolution's four points and says all the variations in human skin colour were available in the genes of the first man and woman. It also says the Christian "does not spend his time trying to solve all such social problems, because neither Jesus nor the apostles took such a course".
Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, Is God a Segregationist?
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read from the document's own HTML; the page markers read 611, 612 and 613 and the printed citation line reads "w56 10/15 pp. 611-613".
Notes. The article answers a Baptist resolution. It does not mention that The Golden Age had printed the curse-of-Canaan explanation in 1929, and it keeps the descent of black people from a named son of Ham, moving it from Canaan to Cush.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID.src-race-w-1956-1015-god-segregationist
8 October 1977 · pp.28-29 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
“MANY religious leaders have answered “Yes.” … But, first of all, please note that nothing is said in this Bible account about anyone’s being cursed with blackness of skin. And note, too, that it is Canaan, not his father Ham, who was cursed. … What great harm has resulted from the misapplication by churchmen of this Biblical curse! The slavery of African blacks, and their mistreatment since the days of slavery, can in no way be justified by the Bible. The truth is, blacks are not, and never were, cursed by God!”
A two-page article in the same issue of Awake! that is given over to race. It quotes the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown commentary applying the curse of Canaan to “the slavery of the Africans”, traces the misreading to the fourth-century writer Ambrosiaster, to a 1873 prayer indulgence of Pope Pius IX and to defenders of American slavery, prints a black reader’s account of trying to scrub the colour off her skin, and says the black race descends from Ham’s sons Cush and probably Put. It attributes the teaching throughout to “religious leaders”, “church commentators” and “churchmen”. It does not mention that The Golden Age of 24 July 1929 printed the same answer, or that Zion’s Watch Tower of 15 July 1902 had called that view “as probable as any other”.
Provenance and verification note for Awake!, What Is the Bible’s View? — Are Blacks Cursed by God?
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full from the document’s own HTML. The page markers read 28 and 29, the printed citation line reads “g77 10/8 pp. 28-29” and the series label above the title reads “What Is the Bible’s View?” The article carries no by-line. Its place in the issue was fixed from the citation lines of the neighbouring documents in the same issue.
Notes. The organisation’s own magazine devotes an article to refuting the teaching that black people are under Noah’s curse, and names churchmen and slaveholders as the source of it. The same teaching had appeared in its own Golden Age in 1929.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID.src-race-g-1977-1008-blacks-cursed
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.
Provenance and verification note for The Golden Age, Bible Questions and Answers
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.
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
15 December 2011 · pp.3-7 · James A. Thompson (life story, as told to the magazine) · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
“AT THAT time in parts of the United States, white and black Jehovah's Witnesses had to have separate congregations, circuits, and districts. … In 1954, some Witnesses took offense when no black speakers were on the program at a number of district assemblies. We encouraged our black brothers to be patient. The following summer, I was assigned as a speaker. Thereafter, more black brothers in the South were on the programs. … In time, racial violence in the South diminished, and congregations gradually began to integrate.”
A first-person life story of a black American Witness born in 1928, told to the magazine. He entered the 20th class of Gilead in September 1952, was assigned afterwards to circuit work visiting black congregations in Alabama, and in the summer of 1953 became a district overseer serving black circuits from Virginia to Florida. A photograph caption printed as “[Picture on page 6]” reads “Traveling overseers and their wives preparing for an integrated district convention, 1966”.
Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, Making Adjustments Has Been Rewarding
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026, read in full from the document’s own HTML and re-checked independently; the page markers read 3 to 7, the printed citation line reads “w11 12/15 pp. 3-7” and the by-line reads “As told by James A. Thompson”. The 1966 date comes from the picture caption, which the document prints after the last page marker and labels as standing on page 6.
Notes. The organisation’s own magazine states that its American congregations, circuits and districts were racially separate, that integration came gradually, and that “some, both blacks and whites, did not favor the new arrangement”.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID.src-race-w-2011-1215-thompson
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