William Branham and the 1963 Birmingham Race Riots

In 1963, white supremacist organizations bombed the A. G. Gaston Motel where Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and others had organized protests against the segregation of the school system and discrimination in Birmingham. Rev. Fred Shuttleworth had convinced King that the desegregation of Birmingham would have a strong influence on the nation, giving the Civil Rights leaders more recognition and influencing the other states of the nation.

The attack was no surprise. The Ku Klux Klan had held a massive rally just out of the city, and anonymous phone threats were placed before the bombing. Birmingham police and the FBI were notified ahead of time that the Klan had planned the attack. The hotel and surrounding area were already under surveillance as an angry mob cried out for Klansmen to kill the Civil Rights leaders. Interestingly, William Branham's are missing from the month of May during the Klan Rally, during one of his most active years of recording sermons.

Following the pattern of other white supremacist leaders, William Branham spoke strongly against the education system and claimed that people with black skin should be happy with their segregated system. Branham publicly sided with those who bombed the blacks in Birmingham by speaking out against those who were bombed. Just after the Birmingham Race Riot, Branham belittled the blacks who fought for equality and repeated the Klan’s false claims that schools for blacks were just as good as the schools for whites. He said, “So they're not slaves. They have as much freedom as anybody else. They, if they were slaves, I would be on that side. But they're not slaves. It's just because they want to go to school. They got schools. Let them go to school. That's right. Was there, remember that old colored brother standing up, that morning, in that riot.“

Birmingham Race Riots:

Speaking Against Those Bombed: Martin Luther King, Jr:

Branham Speaking Against Integration of Schools:

Racial Profiling and Discrimination:

[lesliewells]

WMB was against anyone trying to get their rights, whether it was African-Americans, women, anybody. He said Laodecia meant something like age of people's rights. He talked like you were going against God to try and be treated fairly and equally. So very easy for a white man to say that. It makes me sick--I remember wondering, what is so wrong about wanting to be treated equally? Why is that wrong? But he was the "prophet", and like so many other things he talked about, I thought, I must be wrong because he IS right. That's when the cult really knows they've won, isn't it? When I believed what he said over what I knew deep down inside.

[georgesmyrnis]

WE give THEM integration. Now it’s worse than it ever was.

64-1227 - "Who Do You Say This Is?"
Rev. William Marrion Branham

Even the title of that sermon is provoking…