As a playwright, producer, director, and lecturer, William Branch is best noted for his moralistic stage productions that have won acclaim from audiences in the United States and parts of Europe, Africa, and the Far East. During the 1950s Branch was one of the leading black playwrights in America along with Alice Childress, Langston Hughes, Loften Mitchell, and Louis Peterson. Most of his work since that time has been in television and film.

William Blackwell Branch was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on 11 September 1927, the son of James Matthew Branch, an African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister, and Iola Douglas Branch. He attended high schools in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Washington, D. C., and enrolled at Northwestern University. While still a college freshman he joined the national cast (in Chicago) of Philip Yordan's Broadway success, Anna Lucasta. At Northwestern, from which he would graduate with a B.S. degree...