People of Color
William Branham's repeated use of racial language such as "colored," alongside terms like "Aunt Jemima" and "darkie," reflected the racial assumptions of the white supremacist world that shaped his ministry, especially through his mentor Roy E. Davis and his continued ties to Klan-connected figures; although Branham claimed to have repented of personal hatred toward Black people, his Serpent's Seed and "hybreeding" doctrines carried forward Christian Identity ideas associated with Wesley Swift, teaching racial impurity, condemning interracial marriage, and allowing later Message figures such as Raymond "Junior" Jackson and Lee Vayle to identify Black people with the serpent's alleged evil bloodline, even as modern defenders attempt to soften or obscure the racial meaning of those teachings.
When William Branham described people with black skin, he used a racial slur that was common[1] during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: "colored".[2] He used the term almost a thousand times on the transcripts still available to the public.[3] White supremacists of the era, when speaking to audiences that were not fully aligned with their racist viewpoints, used the word as a way to differentiate African Americans from Caucasians. Branham often mixed this term with other discriminatory terms or phrases such as "Aunt Jemima" or "darkie", but described the color of skin to which he was referring when he used the phrase "colored".
And I got out there, and got down amongst the colored people. And I happened to come down the street, walking like that, and I seen leaning across a little old whitewashed fence, a typical old Aunt Jemima with a man's shirt pinned around her head; she was leaning across the fence, them big black cheeks looking up that way.[4]
Similar to other white supremacist leaders of the era, William Branham taught the Christian Identity doctrines of Wesley A. Swift. According to this doctrine, the Serpent from the Garden of Eden mated with Eve to produce the black race. Branham re-branded Swift's doctrine and sold it to the masses under the name "Serpent's Seed", carefully separating the racial implications from Swift's doctrine into his own "hybreeding" doctrine. According to the "hybreeding" doctrine, the black race was impure, "mongrel",[5] and should not mix with the white race.[6]
And here tonight, a very dramatic scene has appeared. Here is a woman and a man standing again. And she being, our sister, a colored woman, and me a white man, just like it was at the days when Jesus set at the well. And a woman of Samaria come out, and Jesus begin to talk to her, and He said to her, 'Woman, bring Me a drink.'[7]
William Branham admitted that he hated "colored people", and tied this hatred to the beginning of his ministry. Branham was converted by the Ku Klux Klan's 2nd in command, Roy E. Davis,[8] and continued working with elite members of the KKK including Congressman William D. Upshaw.[9] Though Branham claimed to have repented of his hatred of people with black skin, he continued to maintain close ties to these white supremacist leaders and preached the white supremacy doctrines until his death in 1965.
How well I can call the time. In a little old saloon that had been used as a church where some colored people was preaching the Gospel, I was a southerner and didn't like colored people[10]
Raymond "Junior" Jackson and Lee Vayle, two of Branham's partners and publicists,[11][12] openly admitted that William Branham's "Serpent Seed" doctrine was referring to people with black skin as the "evil bloodline". Jackson preached sermons withheld from the public, such as "The Curse of Ham",[13] which described the "evil" through time due to the "colored people". Lee Vayle taught that the Serpent was as "black as the ace of spades" and produced the "colored race.
Cult leaders in the "Message" today attempt to conceal this racist theology by claiming that Branham's use of the racial slur "colored" was instead meaning "multi-colored".
Yes, he did say brother Branham said the Serpent was a giant and that explains the giant people in Genesis 6. But the words used was colored, which could mean a mixed coloring.[14]