Cleveland [Ohio] Advocate
September 25, 1915.
The African-American Experience in Ohio
On Febuary 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith's controversial silent film, The Birth of a Nation, premiered in Los Angeles, California. Released under the title, The Clansman, the movie debuted only after Griffith sought an injunction from the court. Although local censors approved the film, city council members responded to concerns about the racist nature of the picture by ordering it suppressed.
"Elliot & Sherman Film Corp Present D.W. Griffith's…The Birth of a Nation."
Milwaukee
Riverside Printing Co., 1915.
Prints and Photographs Division
Griffith's story centers on two white families torn apart by the Civil War and reunited by what one subtitle calls, "common defence of their Aryan birthright." Promoting a skewed historical vision of a wartorn South further abused by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and radical Republicans, the film remakes Lincoln as a friend of the South. "I shall deal with them as though they had never been away," Griffith's Lincoln says. In The Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan rushes in to fill the void left by Lincoln's untimely death and the chaos of Reconstruction.
Ambitious in its reach, Part I of the film begins in the antebellum period, takes viewers across bloody battlefields of the Civil War, through the burning of Atlanta, and ends with the assassination of Lincoln. Yet, the director never loses sight of the human side of these sweeping events—at least where white Southerners are concerned. The movie is as famous for its tender portrayal of family life as its imaginative use of the camera.
The Birth of a Nation advanced the art of cinema even as it enshrined racist stereotypes and historical myth in the new and powerful medium of film. Assisted by cameraman Billy Bitzer, Griffith packed his film with a virtual catalog of innovative film techniques. The Birth of a Nation introduced or remastered total-screen close-ups, night photography, outdoor photography, fade-out, panoramic long shots, as well as liberal use of cross-cutting between scenes to build suspense. Surgical editing and imaginative camera work were necessary to propel Griffith's three-hour-long epic. The film cost $500,000, employed 18,000 actors and 3000 horses, and required meticulous recreation of historic details.
"NAACP Protests the Screening of the Movie 'Birth of a Nation.'"
New York City, New York, 1947
Prints and Photographs Division
The NAACP immediately and effectively protested the film. Laden with stereotypes of happy slaves and lazy freedmen, and racist assumptions that African-American sexuality was inherently lascivious, The Birth of a Nation was considered a dangerous film. The crime of lynching black men, usually on trumped-up charges of sexual assault, remained a very real concern in 1915 and Griffith's movie effectively portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as a defender of endangered white womanhood. Protest groups had the film suppressed in several places and Griffith quickly edited out some of the most egregious scenes including a segment depicting the castration of an accused rapist.
As the movie circulated the country during the late 1910s, protest groups managed to prevent showings in a variety of locales including Ohio, West Virginia, and New York City. As late as the 1940s, the NAACP continued to picket the film and its efforts led the film industry to add prohibitions against ethnic slurs to its production code. Also, countering the film's negative stereotypes spurred African-American film making.
Not surprisingly, uproar over The Birth of a Nation failed to prevent success at the box office. The film remains among the most profitable movies ever made. However, heightened sensitivity to Griffith's racist viewpoint caused many who initially praised the movie to retract their statements. Contrary to the director's intent, The Birth of a Nation reveals more about early twentieth-century race relations than it tells us about the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Still, the film's contribution to the art of movie making is undeniable and continues to be acknowledged through inclusion on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress and the American Film Institutes's list of the One Hundred Greatest Movies.
" The Perfect Song"
Love Strain from D.W. Griffith's Gigantic Spectacle The Birth of a Nation
words by Clarence Lucas, music Joseph Carl Breil, 1915.
Historic American Sheet Music: 1850-1920
Learn more about the people and controversy surrounding The Birth of a Nation.
- Use the collection The African-American Experience in Ohio to learn more about attempts to ban the film. Search on the term The Birth of a Nation to locate newspaper articles like "We'll Fight to the End Against 'Birth of Nation'" detailing organizational efforts at the local level. See also, "'Birth of a Nation' Answered By Comfort Committee's Film." This Cleveland [Ohio] Advocate column calls the movie Loyalty of a Race "a wonderfully gripping, appealing, and effective movie picture [that] will effectually answer that vile film, 'The Birth of a Nation.'"
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