D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation - an Unfavorable ContemporaryReport

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I have received a few questions lately from CA readers about the unfavorable reports of D. W. Griffith's epic 1915 film about the Civil War and Reconstruction, The Birth of a Nation. So often, modern scholars suggest that this film stood for the broad consensus at the time of its premiere. Granted, a fair number of Americans North and South saw this film as accurate history - that the well worn Lost Cause narrative and the travails of Reconstruction rang true in this film adaptation of Thomas Dixon' s novels, The Leopard's Spots and The Clansman.

But despite the film's popularity and a certain level of acceptance for the film's analytical bent, others did not take so warmly to Grifith's "sensational photoplay" at all...especially Union veterans. The clip above is one of the film's most notorious - it depicts a legislative session in the South Carolina statehouse during the Reconstruction period. Here we witness what some would claim was the absurdity of Black legislators. The racist stereotypes are all there - black lawmakers, shoeless, intoxicated, eating chicken and leering at white women. The hall erupts in near riotous fervor at the passing of a bill allowing interracial marriage - what white South Carolinians feared most.

To underscore reactions by those who had fought for, and thus celebrated Union and Emancipation, I have included a report from the magazine, The Moving Picture World - dated August, 1915.

A state-wide fight on "The Birth of a Nation" is urged by Col. J. M. Snyder, of Canton, 111., who is department commander of the Grand Army of the Republic In Illinois. Three reasons are offered for Its suppression, one of which is that it is not fair to the Union soldiers.
A copy of a resolution passed by a Chicago post has been sent to every post in Illinois with a request from the state commander that a similar resolution be adopted. The resolution is as follows:
"The George H. Thomas Post, No. 5, Department of Illinois. G. A. R., protests against the exhibition called 'The Birth of a Nation.'
"First. Because It contains slanderous representations as to the soldiers who fought to preserve the Union, and caricatures the history of the war.
"Second. It represents the infamous Ku Klux Klun as a society of patriotic and chivalrous men.
"Third. Its whole Influence Is to excite and Intensify hatred of the negro race and to perpetuate sectional bitterness."

The GAR were hardly impressed by this film, which is not hard to imagine.

Peace,
Keith

Taking a Look at D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

The game is afoot! After a lot of secondary reading and a peek in to the historical record I am beginning to formulate some questions concerning D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation.

A few things are striking me as curiously glossed over in the literature on the film - things that I believe are worthy of further inquiry. Most scholars tend to reduce the controversy surrounding this film to racial conflict. In many ways, they are absolutely correct. The film's profoundly racist depiction of black people - whether they be boot-licking sycophants, buffoons, or lustful rapists - without question incited animosity among individual blacks, groups such as the NAACP, and progressive whites.

But connected to this racial conflict is the nagging problem of sectional animosities held over from the Civil War. Only 50 years removed from Appomattox, the war was still fresh in the memories of those who had lived through it. Further, the sons and daughters of the Civil War generation remained attached to sectional interpretations of the war's causes and consequences.

Many scholars would have you believe otherwise. Historians such as David Blight and others have insisted that the memory of the war had - by the twentieth century - been reduced to a mutual celebration of valor and fortitude.

Poppycock. It is becoming apparent to me that many white northern Americans in 1915 saw the Confederate cause as an traitorous abomination and a revolt against law and order. It seems quite logical that groups and individuals would condemn a film that celebrated Confederates as patriots and applauded extra-legal organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

In fact - Union veterans' organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic led the charge against the screening of The Birth of a Nation suggesting that is was "untrue to the facts of history, [did] gross injustice to prominent and patriotic men of Reconstruction times, [was] insulting to colored citizens, and [tended] to glorify mob law."

This is sectionalism pure and simple. Northerners had fought to suppress rebellion - celebrating it 50 years after the fact seemed distasteful at best. Of course, millions in the North flocked to see The Birth of a Nation - and many were surely amazed at the spectacle of this new medium. But they didn't necessarily agree with the film's message.

At any rate, being one who resolutely believes that sectionalism is a central component in the study of American conflict and American history writ large, I am going to pursue this line of reasoning and see where it takes me. My driving questions: to what degree did the contentions of the Civil War remain in the twentieth-century North? How did the war generation influence subsequent generations? In what ways did The Birth of a Nation fuel sectional fires? And finally, the real nugget...are racial conflicts and sectional conflicts interwoven in American history?

I guess we'll just have to see.

peace,
Keith