The Birth of a Nation

Foster Dalmas

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 silent film based off the novel and play The Clansmen by Thomas Dixon Jr., the original title for the film. The Birth of a Nation was considered one of the first film epics. Split into two parts, the first part depicts America before, during, and after the Civil War through a Northern and Southern family. The second part explores the Reconstruction Era of America, demonstrating Lincoln’s assassination, the fall-out of abolishing slavery, and the resurrection of the Ku Klux Klan.

Critic David Kehr has said this film “is where the movies began, both as an art and as a business” (“The Birth Of A Nation”). The Birth of a Nation is considered the first blockbuster and made nearly as much money as Gone With The Wind. Griffith’s filming in Hollywood lead to it becoming the place where films are made. Griffith invented and popularized many filming techniques, including cross-cutting, long shots, close-ups, and location shooting, that has made The Birth of a Nation important to the history of cinema.

The Birth of a Nation was not without controversy. The film was considered racist, particularly for its depiction of African Americans and biracial Americans. In a letter to the Motion Picture Commission of the State of New York in 1922, Walter H. White of the NAACP described The Birth of a Nation as “A glorification and exaltation of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization avowedly for the purpose of creating racial and religious prejudice against various elements of American citizens…. It is a malicious misrepresentation of colored people, depicting them as moral perverts. It arouses sharp antagonisms that embitter American citizens against each other” (“Born Again For DVD”).

Even before the film’s release, the still young NAACP campaigned it against it. The NAACP tried to have the film banned based on censorship, concerned for racial tension and violence that would result; they campaigned against and even tried to stop movies that portrayed African Americans positively (Lynskey). Their efforts were unsuccessful however, and while Griffith did face backlash, the movie was still shown. There was national debate on whether the movie was racist and whether movies, still a relatively venture, should be censored or considered art.

The Birth of a Nation was linked to racial violence that followed in the US. The same year as its release, lynching had increased in the US with “…huge, festive crowds, including women and young children, often turned to witness these hangings, in which victims were slowly tortured, burned alive, or castrated, their body parts disturbed among the crowd as keepsakes” (Wallace). Lynchings were frequently topics for local newspapers where they happened. The KKK was restarted, with membership spiking at the film’s peak of popularity; the new founder William J. Simmons said the movie “helped the Klan tremendously” (Lynskey).

One of the most controversial aspects of The Birth of a Nation is its use of blackface; the major African American characters in the film are portrayed by white actors in blackface. African American actors were not unknown at the time; the 1914 film adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin featured black actors. The film uses African Americans as extras in other scenes. Griffith specifically chose white actors to portray the named African Americans characters despite other options.

The issues with the actors are not just limited to their dark makeup, but their acting. The black characters in The Birth of a Nation act in over exaggerated and unrealistic ways, very different from the white characters. These performances are considered offensive by many critics. Critics point out by portraying the African American characters as over the top, it provides the implication there are unintelligent and harkens back to the history of using blackface to portray African Americans as fools in minstrel shows. It also others black people with the contrast between their manners and the socially acceptable and restrained mannerisms of the white characters. Costuming is another issue. Michelle Wallace notes that the character of Lydia in The Birth of Nation is “…clothed like a gypsy or other colorful ethnic…” (“The Good Lynching”). Lydia’s costume is like other ethnic stereotypes causing her to carry similar connotations as those stereotypes, being foolish, greedy, and untrustworthy.

While the film was critically applauded but divided during its release, the contemporary opinion is that while movie is a technical breakthrough it is also, “’an elaborate justification for mass murder’” (Lynskey). The Birth of a Nation is often discussed with the Nazi film Triumph of The Will as pioneering cinema, while also be a tool for propaganda.

Over a hundred years after its release, the film has been brought up in current discussions of race. Some have drawn comparisons between the film’s story of forming the KKK to keep African Americans from voting to the recent rise of white nationalist groups (Hobbs). Critics of the Trump administration link his slogan of “Make America Great Again” to the film and its idea of saving America and forming a new nation as its title implies (Hobbs).

In recent cinema, Spike Lee’s Academy Award winning Black KkKlansman uses footage from The Birth of a Nation to show how the Klan used the film as a recruiting tool. Spike Lee felt he had to remind people the historical impact the film had outside of pioneering cinematic elements. Lee said, “…in film school, we were shown (The Birth of a Nation) purely from a technical viewpoint — D.W. Griffith being the father of cinema, and the many different techniques and film grammar that he brought into filmmaking. But the professor never talked about that this film was used as a recruiting tool for the Klan. And as my man, Harry Belafonte, said, that film gave a rebirth to the Klan. Directly, people died because of that film” (Keegan). Lee wanted to remind people of the history of this film, a history that was not taught with the film at the time he was in school.

He further said that recent racial tensions in the country motivated him to make the movie, “It’s easy to say Birth of a Nation, [1915], Gone with the Wind, 1939. But this shit’s still happening today. That Pepsi commercial. That Dove commercial. The H&M kid. This stuff is still going on. It keeps perpetuating itself. People just gotta get hip to what the fuck’s going on. This guy in the White House. Oh my God, let’s wake up” (Keegan). Lee wanted to show that just how The Birth of a Nation was used as a tool for racism, there are modern examples he feels have the same impact, including the current presidential administration.

Works Cited

Hobbs, Allyson. “A Hundred Years Later, The Birth of a Nation Hasn’t Gone Away.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 19 June 2017.

Kehr, Dave. The Birth of a Nation. Chicago Reader, Jan. 1985.

— -. “Birth of a Nation, Born Again for DVD.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Nov. 2011.

Keegan, Rebecca. “Spike Lee on Scorching BlacKkKlansman and ‘This Motherf — Ker,’ Donald Trump.” HWD, Vanity Fair, 15 May 2018.

Lynskey, Dorian. “How the Fight to Ban The Birth of a Nation Shaped American History.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 31 Mar. 2015.

Wallace, Michele Faith. “The Good Lynching and The Birth of a Nation: Discourses and Aesthetics of Jim Crow.” Cinema Journal, vol. 43, no. 1, 2003, pp. 85–104. JSTOR.