The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, “The Photo-Drama of Creation — The Color Line Found Necessary”
“Recognizing that it meant either the success or the failure of the enterprise of the Drama as respects the whites, we have been compelled to assign the colored friends to the gallery, which, however, is just as good for seeing and hearing as any other part of The Temple. Some were offended at this arrangement. … If nature favors the colored brethren and sisters in the exercise of humility it is that much to their advantage, if they are rightly exercised by it.”
The report on the Photo-Drama of Creation carries the sub-heading "The Color Line Found Necessary". It states that black attendance in New York had reached about twenty-five per cent of the audience, that "a majority of whites prefer not to intermingle closely with other races", and that letters of protest had been received, "some claiming that it is not right to make a difference, others indignantly and bitterly denouncing us as enemies of the colored people". It records an offer: "if a suitable place could be found in which the Drama could be presented for the benefit of the colored people alone, we would be glad to make such arrangements". It answers objectors with the parable of the guest who takes the chief seat. It closes by saying that those who keep their "Covenant of Sacrifice" "will be granted new bodies, spiritual, beyond the veil, where color and sex distinctions will be no more", and that the Millennial kingdom will then bring restitution "to the perfection of mind and body, feature and color, to the grand original standard".
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Provenance and verification note for The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, The Photo-Drama of Creation — The Color Line Found Necessary
Confidence note. Read in the 1914 Reprints volume on the Internet Archive on 19 September 2026 and re-checked leaf by leaf from the item’s djvu.xml. The leaf carrying the passage has the running head “(105-106) THE WATCH TOWER Brooklyn, N. Y.” and closes with the marker [5434]. This confirms the page 105 usually cited and shows the passage runs on to page 106. The sub-heading “The Color Line Found Necessary” is present in the scan but is omitted from the version circulated on critical sites, which also substitutes “THE PHOTO-DRAMA OF CREATION” for the printed “this Drama” at the opening and drops the word “entirely” from “would entirely deprive us of giving the truth to others”. The text is taken from the item’s OCR with plain OCR artefacts corrected; the page images were not separately inspected.
Scan provenance. Internet Archive item “Magazines: The watch tower and herald of Christ’s presence, 1914”, the Watch Tower Reprints volume for 1914.
Notes. The article is unsigned and written in the editorial “we” of the Society; it refers to “the Editor” and to “Brother Russell” in the third person.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-race-wt-1914-0401-color-line