History of Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses originated as a branch of the Bible Student movement, which developed in the United States in the 1870s among followers of Christian Restorationist minister Charles Taze Russell. Bible Student missionaries were sent to England in 1881 and the first overseas branch was opened in London in 1900. The group took on the name International Bible Students Association and by 1914 it was also active in Canada, Germany, Australia and other countries. The movement split into several rival organizations after Russell's death in 1916, with one—led by Russell's successor, Joseph "Judge" Rutherford—retaining control of both his magazine, "The Watch Tower", and his legal and publishing corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.
Black Hebrew Israelites
The origins of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement are found in Frank Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy, who both claimed that they had revelations in which they believed that God told them that African Americans are descendants of the Hebrews in the Christian Bible; Cherry established the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations in 1886 and Crowdy founded the Church of God and Saints of Christ in 1896. The Church of God and Saints of Christ, originating in Kansas, retained elements of a messianic connection to Jesus. During the following decades, many more Black Hebrew congregations were established, and some of them had no connection to Christianity. After World War I, for example, Wentworth Arthur Matthew, an immigrant from Saint Kitts, founded another Black Hebrew congregation in Harlem, claiming descent from the ancient Israelites. He called it the Commandment Keepers of the Living God. Similar groups selected elements of Judaism and adapted them within a structure similar to that of the Black church. He incorporated it in 1930 and moved the congregation to Brooklyn, where he later founded the Israelite Rabbinical Seminary, where Black Hebrew rabbis have been educated and ordained.