Quite understandably, some of the sentiments contained in the above timeline may horrify you, but they are all found in the Society’s publications or correspondence (as in the case of Rutherford’s letter to Hitler). It’s natural and commendable for you to respond in this way, since the Society’s own publications trained you to be tolerant of people of different races.

There is a reason the Society chooses to ignore their murky past when it comes to racial bigotry. It has to do with the prophetic significance they attach to the early “Bible Students,” as they were then known.

Put simply, the Watch Tower Society claims that Jesus Christ selected the Bible Students, led by Russell and Rutherford respectively, as representatives of his earthly organization in 1919. As you will see from the above timeline, this supposed “selection” by Christ came roughly right in the middle of a period when they were printing some of their most racially offensive articles. It seems inconceivable that Jesus Christ would recruit such a narrow-minded organization to represent him based on what they were writing at the time on matters of race. That is why the modern-day Society chooses to withhold this information, and instead points the finger at other religions for their racially bigoted histories.

The above excerpt is taken from Zion’s Watch Tower, April 15th 1900, page 122.

In the above article entitled “Can Restitution Change The Ethiopian’s Skin?” Russell leaps upon an incident whereby a black preacher claimed to have developed white skin after having prayed for it. Reverend Draper, who apparently told others that “if he could only be white like his employer, he would be happy,” started praying thirty years prior to the article and experienced a transformation over the period leading up to its publication. Once his skin was completely white, he returned to his former church, and had a hard time convincing the members of his identity. We now know that this “miraculous” transformation was the result of Vitiligo, a medical condition resulting in depigmentation of areas of skin. It isn’t that rare, and I’ve met people who have this condition. Perhaps you have too.

However, Russell was apparently so obsessed by the idea of black people becoming white that he would leap on any related report as evidence that this might happen on a grander scale in the future. The February 15, 1904 Watchtower reported a similar incident involving a nine-year-old boy named Julius Jackson under the heading “Can The Ethiopian Change His Skin?” which I reproduce below:

Russell believed that the skin of a black brother would turn white during the Millennial Kingdom.

The above excerpt is taken from Zion’s Watch Tower, July 15th 1902, pages 215-216.

The above excerpt is taken from Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1st 1914, pages 105-106.

I can barely imagine the humiliation of turning up at a screening of the Photodrama as a “fan” of Russell at the time, only to be separated and herded like an animal into a different part of the theatre on account of the color of my skin. Then to add insult to my injury, be told that this was necessary to not upset white visitors, because “explain it how you will, a majority of whites prefer not to intermingle with other races.”  I can’t imagine wishing to continue my association with the Bible Students after suffering such an indignity. After all, how could this be Christ’s church if “the success… of the enterprise of the Drama as respects the whites” was more important to the Society than observing racial equality? How could these truly be God’s people if they were so ready to pander to racist bigotry? Might it be because the leaders were racists themselves? These would have been my honest questions.

Any blacks who turned up to see the Photodrama screening in January 1914 at The Temple, West 63rd Street, were segregated.

In any case, apparently not all so-called “colored brethren” were repelled by this incident. Evidently, the Society’s “audience numbers over equality” line of reasoning was “entirely satisfactory to all of the fully consecrated” with only a few “tenacious and quarrelsome” individuals objecting. It seems that, as respects this incident, everything boiled down to humility. After all, according to the article, “nature favors the colored brethren and sisters in the exercise of humility.” Although I believe the writer intended the remarks about humility as a pacifying compliment, they are also a clear nod towards the scourge of negro slavery that tarnished America before the Civil War. The writer attempts to commend the black readership for its perceived humble roots, irrespective of the despicable circumstances under which these were ostensibly forged.

The article then goes on to revert back to Russell’s obsession with the skin of an Ethiopian, or more pointedly, his belief that black Christians could expect their skin to change when the “Millennial kingdom will be inaugurated.” The writer tells us that, when that time comes, all mankind will experience “restitution to the perfection of mind and body, feature and color, to the grand original standard, which God declared ‘very good.’ ” Again, quite why a Christian would need to have the color of his skin changed to the “original standard” is a mystery, and Russell’s strange preoccupation with this offensive concept found yet another outlet in this article.

Rutherford, who enjoyed his liquor, spoke of "sobering the southern negro" in an article against prohibition.

An excellent example of such pompous bigotry is bountifully provided in another Golden Age article, published in the October 30, 1927 edition of the magazine (pages 140-143). This three-and-a-half page rant, penned under the name of J. L. Bolling, was a tirade of insults and accusations hurled at the author Harriet Beecher Stowe to discredit her famous and highly influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fictional story depicting the brutal treatment of black slaves.

I’m sure many reading this article will have read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or are otherwise familiar with it. Many historians credit the book with playing a key role in bringing about the abolishment of slavery in America. It raised public awareness of the awful practice – surely an extremely noble and laudable cause in the minds of any genuine Christian. However, whoever Bolling was, he certainly didn’t believe that getting rid of slavery was a good idea. You may read it for yourself. The article itself is so large that I’ve created a separate PDF download for those who would like to read it in its entirety: The Golden Age v Uncle Toms Cabin 1927. I’ll warn anyone who wishes to do so in advance that it’s arguably one of the most vulgar and outlandish of the Society’s articles that they are ever likely to encounter. The piece, entitled “The Story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is reproduced below, and all subsequent images are from the Golden Age article in question unless otherwise indicated. For the purposes of brevity, I will focus on some of the more intriguing quotes.

Bolling starts his article as he means to go on, with an outrageous assertion that Stowe was under the influence of spirit mediums when writing the book. He expands on this as follows…

After providing an exhaustive overview of the spirit encounters alleged to have been experienced by Harriet Stowe’s husband, Calvin Stowe, Bolling asserts that these played a guiding role in inspiring her to write the book. Bolling goes so far as to suggest that Satan engineered Stowe’s marriage to her husband for this very reason. “Through her husband”, writes Bolling, “Mrs Stowe undoubtedly was strongly influenced by these wicked spirits; and this was doubtless Satan’s object in effecting their union in marriage.”

Bolling goes on to paint Stowe as an “impulsive” and “rash” author, prone to “coloring her narrative” and “caring little for facts” before sinking ever deeper into his astonishing tirade against what was, after all, a fictional novel. He leaves no stone unturned in finding grievances against Stowe, even suggesting that she was ill qualified to write a book of any great significance on account of her being a woman…

Bolling used Mrs. Stowe’s personal views against her, namely that she was divinely inspired while writing her book, or (as she allegedly said), “God wrote it.” Despite using Stowe’s words against her to try to prop up his arguments, he is very selective in what parts of Stowe’s reputed quotes he believes or refutes. He twists Stowe’s words about her book being the product of “an unknown power” into an outrageous claim that, far from being inspired by God, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (a book that helped abolish slavery) is “the work of Satan”!

I don’t think it’s remotely unfair to suggest that Bolling, whoever he was, was a brazen racist. Nobody who forms the opinion that a book instrumental in ending slavery is the product of the devil could conceivably view black men and women as his or her equals. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, Bolling’s racist views were not limited only to black people. In the last paragraph reproduced above, he describes Spaniards as a “backwards race.”

To quote more from Bolling’s article is futile. In resurrecting his venomous article from the dusty and long-forgotten archives of the Golden Age where it belongs, I have already provided a 21st Century platform to this long-dead racist to which he is far from worthy. Suffice to say, he continues his rant about Stowe to the end, and makes some bizarre claims about God’s plan for America. He claims that America is “the workshop and experimental laboratory of the time of the end”, and explains that Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of many attempts by Satan to destroy America’s institutions. He even hails Abraham Lincoln as being “God’s chosen instrument in saving the Union” – proof (if it were needed) of how little credence should be attached to his crazy opinions.

I can already hear the objections of many who have read this far in my article. You’re perhaps yelling: “But hang on, this guy Bolling is not representative of Rutherford’s views, or of God’s organization for that matter. After all, the Golden Age ceased to be printed many decades ago!”

Firstly, as with Russell’s editorship of the Watchtower, “Judge” Rutherford was the Society’s president at the time when it published this article. He would have approved its release. Therefore, we can consider the article representative of Rutherford’s views as well as Bolling’s. Anything that rolled off the Society’s printing press at that time would have been considered as spiritual “food at the proper time” (Matt:24:45). Furthermore, according to the Society’s own (and more recent) publications, the Golden Age isn’t just considered a lowly forerunner to the Awake! – it WAS the Awake! Consider the following quote, published under the heading “Awake! – A Magazine With Broad Public Appeal” in the Society’s official history book:

Whoever actually penned this article obviously couldn’t resist the temptation to go further than merely insinuating that the black race is the product of a curse. The writer was deluded enough to label black people “a race of servants”, and dwelled on the “joys” of slavery, even though one assumes he was not in bondage himself at the time of writing. He goes so far as to say: “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.” As I said, I’m pretty sure the writer doesn’t speak from experience in telling of how joyful life is as a “good Colored servant.”  What I AM sure of is that his views were extremely offensive and reflected a bigoted and demeaning view of black people in general. That such outrageous and deplorable opinions could find their way into a magazine purporting to represent spiritual food from God’s faithful “Slave Class” is even more incomprehensible.

Rutherford’s Anti-Semitism

As the 30s dawned, the world was beset by a troubling new age of fascism. One would like to think of the Society as being at the forefront of condemning fascist governments such as the one inflicted on the German people by the diabolical tyrant, Adolf Hitler. Sadly, when one investigates, one finds the reverse was true. It doesn’t seem necessary to go into Rutherford’s flirtations with the Nazi Government at great length, not least because an excellent and comprehensive article is available on the subject on JWFacts.com. Instead, I will focus on the racial element of Rutherford’s overtures, particularly as found in his letter to Hitler, and his “Declaration of Facts” as published in the 1934 Yearbook.

Rutherford accused "Jewish business men" of "oppressing the people's of many nations"

To give a brief background to the documents mentioned above, I would first need to give you an extremely concise (perhaps over-simplified) version of events leading up to their publication. If anyone can give me documentary evidence that refutes my version of these events, I would be happy to receive this information and amend my account accordingly.

From the outset of Rutherford’s presidency, he wasted no time in stamping his mark on what he perceived as false Christendom – especially Catholicism. Publications such as The Finished Mystery unleashed scathing rebukes of the Catholic Church. These critiques weren’t quite as “death dealing” or “apocalyptic” as the Revelation Climax book leads us to believe, but they did succeed in well and truly getting on the nerves of the Catholic hierarchy, who at the time were highly influential in the world of politics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, once sufficiently riled by Rutherford’s constant provocations, they took their anger out on the Bible Students by getting governments to ban their work wherever possible. One country that was only too ready to do this was Nazi Germany.

Rutherford was then faced with German Bible Students being rounded up and sent to concentration camps for no other reason than because the Catholic church (which he had spent years provoking) had succeeded in getting their way with Hitler and his cronies. What did Rutherford do to reverse the situation? He told Hitler that the issue was just a huge misunderstanding, and actually the Bible Students were the friends of the Nazi government and not their enemies.

The aforementioned webpage on jwfacts has the original 3-page letter sent by Rutherford to Hitler in 1933, together with a translation into English (obviously the letter was prepared in German). Among other things, the letter proclaims the Watch Tower Society is “pro-German” and blames “Jewish businessmen and Catholics” for spreading propaganda against the Society and its directors, leading to their unfair arrest. Curiously Rutherford goes so far as to insist that “the Bible Students of Germany are fighting for the very same high ethical goals and ideals which also the national government of the German Reich proclaimed.”

In addition to his letter, Rutherford journeyed to Berlin to appear before the brothers there, and presented a “Declaration of Facts” to the delegates in attendance. The Declaration, which was essentially a watered-down version of his letter to Hitler, appeared in the 1934 Yearbook. Take note of an interesting quote from the Declaration:

I can’t help but grimace when I think of what it would have been like for the delegates in Berlin as they received these words from their leader, Rutherford. They were already in the grips of a lengthy period of persecution, thanks largely to the provocative and sensationalist writings of the man who stood before them. Unbeknownst to them, this persecution would only get worse, and claim the lives of many of them. Now they could see for themselves that the ideology of the “Judge” and that of their Führer was not so very different. Did they agree with him? Were they embarrassed? I suppose we will never know. I do know that if I had sat in that audience, any tenuous belief that Rutherford spoke as a representative of God’s organization on Earth would have been shattered the moment he began his brief but stinging tirade against Jewish businessmen. I can only be thankful that his disgraceful words and hateful rhetoric has long since been buried by an embarrassed Watch Tower Society, who after the war and Rutherford’s death must have looked back with total humiliation at how they could have so completely misjudged a clear conflict between good and evil, and ended up supporting the wrong side.

Today we hear so much in the Society’s literature of all those poor Bible Students who died at the hands of the Nazi Regime. The publications trumpet that they died by making a stand for neutrality, and ignore the inconvenient truth that the persecution arose, at least in part, through the urgings of a clergy that had been harassed to breaking point by Rutherford’s writings. The bravery of these men and women in refusing to yield to their persecutors through albeit misguided loyalties to Rutherford’s ideology is both profoundly admirable and heart wrenching. However, having researched this chain of events from an untainted perspective, it’s clear to me now that their deaths were entirely preventable. Arguably, nobody paid a heavier price for Rutherford’s stubborn and bigoted worldview than those poor German brothers. I can only hope that a similar situation involving persecution at the hands of political powers doesn’t present itself any time soon.

The Post-Rutherford Era

After Rutherford’s death, it seems the winds of change, including the civil rights movement in the 1960s, influenced the Society to abandon previous long-held racist views. Increasingly, blacks were accepted into higher offices within the Society. The Watchtower published no further racially offensive statements in any of its publications – except for the following  published just before the civil rights movement gained momentum in a 1952 Questions From Readers:

“Many colored persons practice color-prejudice against their own people. Lighter-colored Negroes will shun the darker ones. Some from the Western Hemisphere look down upon the very dark ones from Africa. In South Africa, whites discriminate against the mixed coloreds, the mixed coloreds against the native blacks, the native blacks against the Indian coolies, and in their native India the Indians discriminate against the no caste or outcasts. Who is innocent to throw the first stone? Can we not see that all classes of the human race are evil, that if we start reforming we shall be lost in an impossible task, with endless discriminations and many varieties or injustices to beat down, which crusading social and political organizations of this world have hopelessly fought for years? For us to become like them would be to fail with them, consume our time in such reforms, lose out as Jehovah’s witnesses, and please only the Devil. So let us please God by preaching the gospel despite the undesirable conditions the Devil’s world may make for us. Let us not be sidetracked by Satan and caught in a subtle snare camouflaged in lofty motives and ideals. Can we not wait upon Jehovah to avenge the wrongs we suffer now? Really, our colored brothers have great cause for rejoicing. Their race is meek and teachable, and from it comes a high percentage of the theocratic increase. What if the worldly wise and powerful and noble look down on them as foolish and weak and ignoble, not on an equality with self-exalted whites? It is to God’s ultimate honor, for he confounds the wise of this world by choosing those the world considers foolish and weak and ignoble. Let us boast in Jehovah and in our equality in his sight, rather than wanting to boast in equality in the world’s sight. “(The Watchtower, February 1st 1952, page 95)

Arguably, this article is nowhere near as offensive as the vile bigotry published under Russell and Rutherford. However, a demeaning portrait of the blacks as a race that is “meek and teachable” is still painted. A racial stereotype, no matter how complimentary, is a racial stereotype nonetheless – and no race would revel in the false insinuation that they are prone to being gullible or easily manipulated. Like many of the excerpts reproduced above, if this quote appeared in a modern Watchtower magazine there would be understandable outcry. Obviously, the Society is cleverer than that! However, I’m still curious about how they suddenly found the courage to include the above quote on the Watchtower Library CD-ROM. Doubtless, they think it unlikely that regular publishers will uncover it.

Racism – Gone But Not Forgotten

The Society makes no mention in modern publications of the dreadful racial slurs that frequented the Watchtower publications in their murky past. Random admissions to having once celebrated birthdays or used the cross are one thing, but it takes a far deeper candor to admit to being a racist organization in their early beginnings – especially when approval by Christ was at stake in those days. To an extent I can understand their reluctance to come clean over their racist past. What I cannot fathom is the eagerness with which they have pursued other religions over their records of racial equality. Consider the following quote from a 1982 edition of Awake, in an article entitled “The Races – What Is Their Origin?”:

“Have the churches of Christendom always treated ‘everyone on the same basis’? Consider how the Catholic and Lutheran Churches supported Hitler’s scheme to produce a ‘master race.’ And for centuries the Catholic Church taught that Negroes were a cursed race. John F. Maxwell states in his book Slavery and the Catholic Church that this view ‘apparently survived until 1873 when Pope Pius IX attached an indulgence to a prayer for the ‘wretched Ethiopians in Central Africa that almighty God may at length remove the curse of Cham [Ham] from their hearts.’ (Italics ours) And even to this day some church organizations openly practice racial discrimination.” (Awake! February 8th 1982, pp. 14-15)

One would think that the Society, with one eye on its own lurid record, would edge away from criticizing other religions over their racial history – but not a bit. They can still summon the gall to cry foul over the Catholic church’s former view of the blacks as a cursed race, even though this doctrinal standpoint ceased to form part of recognized Catholic dogma long before it left the pages of the Society’s literature. Indeed, the 1929 Golden Age printed this article on Noah’s curse a full 56 years after this Pope’s remarks on the subject were made known. And in a supreme irony, the Society recognizes the very magazine that criticized Pope Pius IX in 1982 as being the same journal that printed similar remarks in 1929 under the banner The Golden Age! Surely there are few more jaw-dropping examples of hypocrisy in the Society’s literature than an Awake! article that criticizes a dead Pope for making racist comments similar to those expressed in its own pages far more recently. – Luke 6:42

Pope Pius IX issued the last racially offensive expression on behalf of the Catholic church 56 years before the Society printed very similar rhetoric, but was still criticized in an Awake article on race.

The Golden Age, July 24th 1929, page 702.

The above excerpt is taken from 1934 Yearbook, page 134.