![]() Immediately after the film's release, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a surge in membership, and it continued to use the film as a recruiting tool for decades after that.Īs a young journalist in the late 1970s, Lehr infiltrated the local Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for a story. Long after 1915, the silent film continued to find audiences. "For me, as an author and a researcher reconstructing this great drama," Lehr says, "I kept scratching my head going, 'What year is this?!' This is 1915, but it's so 1960-ish in terms of its protest strategy."ĭespite the protests, the Boston screenings did go on as scheduled - but the protesters set a template for other cities to follow.Īfter Boston, theater owners in other towns demanded significant edits to the film before they'd screen it in other places, it was banned outright. Trotter was arrested at a demonstration in front of a theater where the movie was playing. He organized mass demonstrations where several thousand protesters, mostly black, turned out to say the film was not accurate. Woodrow Wilson reportedly called it "history written in lightning."īut in Boston, newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter organized protests that involved the Boston branch of the NAACP. It even became the first movie ever to be screened at the White House. So the Los Angeles screenings were successful in spite of the outrage, as were New York City's. The civil rights movement was still quite young at the time the NAACP had just incorporated a few years earlier. The film's initial success drowned out the voices of those who tried to protest. "There's one critic said, 'The worst thing about "The Birth of a Nation" is how good it is.' " Lehr says the film was the Avatar or Star Wars of 1915: It was a runaway hit. But The Birth of a Nation, far from falling into oblivion, led to the birth of Hollywood. Griffith's understanding of the past was based on a twisted account, and today it's easy to imagine that a movie like his would flop and be forgotten. What bigger story to tell as a breakout, epic film than the story of America's Civil War and its aftermath?" His father had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. "He was a man of the South from Kentucky. "He wanted to do something very big," says Lehr. Griffith, looking at what he saw as history, was motivated by artistic ambition, Lehr says. "That was the embedded, bigoted, racist state of mind of the time." and that former slaves were some kind of lower form of life," Lehr says. "Griffith thought he was, in a way, reporting history about the Civil War and Reconstruction, and it was widely accepted at the time - which has been completely debunked since - that Reconstruction was a disaster. Interviews 'Klansville, U.S.A.' Chronicles The Rise And Fall Of The KKKĪt the time, much of the storyline was accepted as historically accurate. " portrayed the emancipated slaves as heathens, as unworthy of being free, as uncivilized, as primarily concerned with passing laws so they could marry white women and prey on them," Dick Lehr, author of The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America's Civil War, tells NPR's Arun Rath. The Birth of a Nation is three hours of racist propaganda - starting with the Civil War and ending with the Ku Klux Klan riding in to save the South from black rule during the Reconstruction era. Griffith flickered on the screen: "This is an historical presentation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Period, and is not meant to reflect on any race or people of today."īut its effects on race relations were devastating, and reverberations are still felt to this day. One hundred years ago Sunday, the nascent film industry premiered what would go on to be its first blockbuster: The Birth of a Nation.Īs the house lights dimmed and the orchestra struck up the score, a message from director D.W. Actors dressed in full Ku Klux Klan regalia for scenes in 1915's The Birth of a Nation.
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