Southern Blend – KKK Part 4: “The Birth of a Nation”
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send your username and password to you.
Southern Blend
John Rittmann
KKK Part 4: “The Birth of a Nation”
Scene from “The Birth of a Nation” showing Klan members and a Black man.
Well, y’all, we’re entering a fourth week discussing the history of the Ku Klux Klan. Before we get rolling, I think it’s a good time to get back to the basics and briefly explain why I write about these topics. It’s been more than a year of “Southern Blend” at this point, and it’s been quite a year.
I grew up the son of a woodworker in the Appalachian Craft Guild and a high school teacher. I found myself exposed to a side of Southernism that we often do not get taught in or out of school. I often find that discussions of southern history tend to revolve around very specific topics that we’ve been beat over the head with time and time again. Therefore, my hope for this column is to either discuss things we weren’t openly taught about, or to find the underside of those things with which we are familiar. I welcome any suggestions for these topics – I love a good research challenge! I invite all of you to suggest topics that reflect a large impact on southern history or culture.
With that aside, let’s get back to business. When last we spoke, we were discussing the fall of the first generation of the Ku Klux Klan. Throughout those first years, we saw the utilization of costumed militias hellbent on harassing, abusing and killing Black Southerners. President Grant’s administration managed to take a lot of the wind out of this terrorist organization – but it wasn’t dead yet. In the early 20th Century, a film would be released that aided in rebirthing and revitalizing the Klan.
“The Birth of a Nation” is given a fairly tame definition by Encyclopedia Britannica: “’The Birth of a Nation,’ landmark silent film, released in 1915, that was the first blockbuster Hollywood hit. It was the longest and most-profitable film then produced and the most artistically advanced film of its day. It secured both the future of feature-length films and the reception of film as a serious medium. An epic about the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Reconstruction era that followed, it has long been hailed for its technical and dramatic innovation but condemned for the racism inherent in the script and its positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“The Birth of a Nation” was based on a novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. entitled “The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan.” To sum up the plot of a 3-hour film, let alone the novel upon which it is based, is absolute foolishness. However, to sum it up foolishly, both stories are a retelling of the Civil War and Reconstruction as if Black people are inherently lazy, manipulative and generally evil. A particularly notable scene in “The Birth of a Nation” is one in which South Carolina’s state legislature is taken over by Black people because of voter intimidation and ballot stuffing. The legislature is a hot mess, in which the reasonable and genteel white minority is attempting to do important business while Black legislators lounge, remove their shoes, openly drink whiskey, and eat fried chicken. The story ends with the heroic men of the Ku Klux Klan riding in to save the day, preceded by an intertitle reading “The former enemies of the North and South are united again in common defense of the Aryan birthright.”
I wish I was making this up. And “The Birth of a Nation” wasn’t simply a product of its time, as many retellers might tell. It was recognized as a shocking, racist film by many groups and individuals at that time. D.W. Griffith, the film’s Kentuckian director, received a great deal of criticism about the film.
His response to these accusations is confusingly paternalistic and misguided. In response to accusations that he was anti-(Black), “To say that is like saying I am against children, as they were our children, whom we loved and cared for all of our lives.” You might be interested to know that despite this film, D.W. Griffith went on to be a wildly successful director, and went on to help found production studio United Artists.
In general the film is regarded as a landmark in directorial prowess. If one can separate the subject from the skill making said film, one can possibly see what is meant. Despite the valid criticism against it, the film was a smash hit and an artistic accomplishment. President Woodrow Wilson (who we will discuss next week) hosted a screening of it at the White House. President Wilson is quoted as saying, “It is like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”
When met with criticism for making such a bizarre statement about a fictional film in which the Klan are superheroes, he later claimed that he “was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it.” Fake news, indeed.
We will continue this story next week when we discuss the following resurgence of the Klan as a result of Wilson’s presidency and The Birth of a Nation’s success.