D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic film
What is The Birth of a Nation?
D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic 1915 film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and freed Black people.
Similar to Gone With the Wind but without spoken dialogue.
History is usually written by the winners. But that wasn’t the case when The Birth of a Nation was released on February 8, 1915. In just over three hours, D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and immoral freed Black people. The film was an instant blockbuster. And with innovative cinematography and a Confederate-skewed point of view, The Birth of a Nation also helped rekindle the KKK.
Until the movie’s debut, the Ku Klux Klan founded in 1865 by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, was a regional organization in the South that was all but obliterated due to government suppression. But The Birth of a Nation’s racially charged Jim Crow narrative, coupled with America’s heightened anti-immigrant climate, led the Klan to align itself with the movie’s success and use it as a recruiting tool.
A heightened anti-immigrant climate eh? That sounds oddly familiar.
Adapted from the book The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr., who was a classmate and friend of President Woodrow Wilson, The Birth of a Nation portrayed Reconstruction as catastrophic. It showed Radical Republicans encouraging equality for Black people, who in the film are represented as uncouth, intellectually inferior and predators of white women. And this racist narrative was widely accepted as historical fact.
That is, Black men are represented as predators of white women.
Anyway. That one movie has a lot to answer for.
I not long ago read a book about how the South won the Civil War; I don’t remember if it mentioned this film, but it did have a lot of good historical and political insights. We were so eager to reclaim the South as part of the union that they got away with a lot. Now they continue to get away with a lot.
^ Culturally it sure won the long game. They decry the Union as aggressors and oppressors, yet in my mind the north was far too gentle in its victory.
Many years ago, attending a workshop as a representative for a non-Southern state infrastructure organisation, I happened to be sitting next to a counterpart working for a Southern state. I said something to him about the work we’d been doing to shift all of our standards from imperial to metric measurements, to comply with federal guidelines; after a certain date states couldn’t receive federal infrastructure development funds unless they switched to metric. This guy said ‘oh, we’re not going to do that.’ He was sure they’d get their money anyway. I remember a similar situation with respect to requiring carpool lanes on bridges and roads to qualify for federal funds; administrators in Southern states said ‘nah, we aren’t going to do that, give us our money anyway’ (IIRC they designated a lane of a road or bridge as a ‘carpool lane’ then changed it back as soon as they got their funding). They believed (correctly) that they were entitled to federal support without any kind of accountability for federal compliance – they knew they were above the law.
Eric Foner’s Reconstruction is the go-to on this subject.
In some places in the South Reconstruction gave emancipated blacks a fair new start at a free life. I was raised with the carpetbagger legend, but my own research into my own community showed that Reconstruction Boards sometimes got things right. My recent trip to Austin took me through a Freedmen’s resettlement community and past a university established by the Reconstruction Board.
I don’t think there should be reparations for slavery, but I do think there should be an effort to redress how Reconstruction failed.
It’s not so much that Reconstruction failed as it is that it was killed.
The unfortunate fact is that it was an enormously influential film along two dimensions – the racism one of the theme, and the technical dimension. The evolution of film for some reason cannot really be understood without understanding two films like this: Birth of a Nation, and Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. We see scenes from those two remade all the time, very often without realizing it, and with techniques that did not exist beforehand.
I have seen the film and it is horribly hard to watch. I do remember a blonde girl defending her honour (I think) described as “Aryan” – so that poisonous language had emerged by then.
Naif#7. Its spirit also still seems to be influential today. Ask Nikki Haley, the divinely anointed Mike Johnson (the new Moses!), or De Santis.
In Florida and elsewhere, like Prager ‘University’, another institution funded with extreme right-wing money is infiltrating the public school system with curricula & charter schools: Hillsdale College, the alma mater of Eric Prince. In his book ‘There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech… And It’s a Good Thing, Too’ (published back in 1994), Stanley Fish describes the tactics adopted by right-wing apologists:
‘…the basic move is to abstract persons and issues from the flow of history… so that real-world issues can be reduced to problems in a moral algebra: any policy that takes race into consideration is equivalent to any other policy that takes race into consideration, Nazis equivalent to Israeli hardliners, Ku Klux Klanners equivalent to those who favor minority set-asides. In the making of such equivalences, differences in power, motive, and morality just don’t count….’
We have seen this tactic here, on display among the comments. Actual people, who were born into particular familial and social circumstances, have grown up in particular ways, have been educated in particular ways, have undergone particular experiences, are reduced to abstract ‘individuals’ (counters, more like) who may be distinguished only, it seems, by their IQ, or their money.
And we have seen another favoured tactic practised here by the same commenter – one that Fish also remarks on: that of disingenuously quoting the following words of Martin Luther King: ‘I have a dream that one day my four little children will…not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ While, of course, wholly ignoring the rest of the speech and the context within which it was made. As Fish remarks, it is an ‘oh-so-convenient’ sentence for the dissembling racist, as he or she strives to create a ‘thin veneer’ that is designed to cover ‘attitudes that will not bear examination’ – but that are nevertheless obvious.
There is nothing original in these tactics in 2023 – they have been the dishonest stock-in-trade of the rightists, or, as Fish bluntly calls them, racists, for many decades. It is well to be aware of them, and the stench of the bad faith with which they are employed.
A link to a brief Youtube video on the controversy ove Hillsdale College & its activities:
https://youtu.be/jYv0B2n0x9g?si=r4ocsjMZJNGN2Hk5
From an article on the website Raw Story about a Missouri school:
‘After the Francis Howell School District board’s move to drop Black History and Black Literature courses caused a national uproar, members agreed to reinstitute classes upon approval, according to the report.
‘The new curriculum must be “largely politically neutral,” board President Adam Bertrand and Superintendent Kenneth Roumpos said, a statement that caused alarm among those who fought the initial action.’
‘Politically neutral’ – what does that even begin to mean?