The Judge William Branch Legacy Foundation presents
BRANCH ACADEMY
A free digital academy and library for young adults, built on the life of Judge William McKinley Branch, the first Black probate judge in the United States.
The record
The son of entrepreneurs became the first Black probate judge in the United States, then spent eighteen years building a county.
Gallery one
1918 – 1940s
William McKinley Branch was born on May 10, 1918, in Forkland, Greene County, Alabama, to William and Pecola Branch, entrepreneurs and business owners who taught him early what it meant to build something of your own. His father admired President William McKinley and named his son for him.
He came up through the segregated Greene County Training School. In the mid-1940s he married Alberta Carpenter. They were married for seventy years and raised seven children.
Alabama's law schools would not admit him. He went north to earn the degree, and came home to use it.
An education built against the odds
The county's segregated school for Black students
Degree in theology, from a historically Black university
Bachelor of science, Montgomery
Law degree, earned out of state while no Alabama law school admitted Black students
Gallery two
More than sixty years
Churches in New York and Detroit offered him their pulpits. After prayer, he stayed in Alabama.
He chose Forkland, and pastored Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church for more than sixty years.
He also taught government and social studies in the Greene County schools for eleven years. The pulpit and the classroom gave him the same thing: a room full of people he could organize. Both became the base of a movement.
Gallery three
1950s – 1968 · Select a year
Gallery four
1969 – 1970
In 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Greene County had illegally kept Black candidates of the National Democratic Party of Alabama off the ballot. The county's probate judge, Dennis Herndon, was held in contempt.
In 1970 William M. Branch ran for that same office under the NDPA banner, and won. He was the first Black probate judge in the nation since Reconstruction. Thomas E. Gilmore, a pastor he considered a mentor, was elected sheriff the same year. Black candidates swept every county office, and the national press came to Eutaw.
Mark the ballot the way Greene County did.
FOR JUDGE OF PROBATE
Vote for one
Tap a name to cast your vote.
Ballot is an illustration, not a reproduction of the original.
Gallery five
Eighteen years on the bench
His 1986 campaign record lists about $91 million in federal, state, local and private investment brought into one of the poorest counties in America. Housing, clean water, health care, jobs. Tap the ledger to see where it went.
Agencies and boards he organized
Gallery six · 1993
He served as probate judge for eighteen years, overseeing wills, estates and elections, and chaired the County Commission. He ran for the U.S. House in 1986 while serving his third six-year term, and reportedly met presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton.
In 1993 Greene County built a new courthouse and named it in his honor. He died on January 13, 2014, at age 95, and was buried at Ebenezer Cemetery, beside the church he led for more than sixty years.
Proclamation
May 10, 2026
Declared by Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle on May 10, 2026, what would have been Judge Branch's 108th birthday.
Gallery seven
Demopolis · Self-made
Grandmother
She worked two jobs with a second-grade education and bought several properties in Demopolis, Alabama. A real estate investor before the term was common, she built wealth through hard work, saving and smart investing.
Mother
As a girl she studied hairstyles in magazines and recreated them on herself, until people began paying her to do theirs. She built a career as a cosmetologist and nail stylist and carried her mother's discipline with money into her own business. She passed away on October 4, 2023.
IN LOVING MEMORY
The Academy · Ages 18 – 30 · Free
Learn the principle · See the proof · Build your own
Short video lessons with workbooks, free and open to anyone.
A 12-week guided cohort of 25 to 40 young adults with mentors, live sessions and a capstone showcase.
A certificate for each school, and the Branch Scholar designation for completing all six.
Workshops helping Black Belt families clear title and protect inherited land.
The Branch Digital Library
Tap any photograph to view it full size
The collections
Legacy Leadership Awards
Presented at the annual Legacy Gala
Every nominee must show proven community leadership and ownership of an active business. Winners receive an award, a grant, a Digital Library profile and a role as guest mentor to the Branch Fellows. A selection committee with a majority of members from outside the family chooses them.
Ways to partner · Year 1 goal $245,000
Choose a level, or set your own gift
In-kind partners are also welcome: instructors, mentors, venues, video production, and banks or employers who host workshops.
Year 1 budget
Timeline
Archive digitized, platform chosen, first two schools outlined
Courses produced, Digital Library online, partners signed
Self-paced courses open; first Branch Fellows cohort begins
Fellows showcase; first Legacy Leadership Awards at the Gala
Outcomes we will report
| Schools launched | 2 |
| Self-paced learners enrolled | 300+ |
| Fellows completing the cohort | 20 of 25 |
| Archive items published | 100 |
| Oral histories recorded | 10 |
| Legacy Leadership Award recipients | 2 |
A letter from the founder
“He raised me, and he told me to call him Daddy.”
Branch Academy exists because one man proved what a community can build when it organizes, owns and invests. That man was my grandfather, Judge William McKinley Branch. Everything I know about leadership, faith and building something that lasts, I learned first in his house.
His record is our curriculum. Branch Academy teaches young adults the same playbook: understand how power and money work, own land, build businesses, and lead institutions that outlast you. It also carries the lessons of my mother, West Mae Neal-Branch, and my grandmother, Irine Mc Carter-Neal.
We are inviting partners to help us launch. Your support puts this legacy to work for the next generation.
William Branch IVFounder, Judge William Branch Legacy Foundation
Contact
Founder, Judge William Branch Legacy Foundation. Gifts are made to the Foundation; please consult your tax advisor about deductibility.
Historical sources: Branch family archive; Encyclopedia of Alabama; Alabama Department of Archives and History; Hadnott v. Amos, 394 U.S. 358 (1969).