The Birth of a Nation: A Racist Moment in Film History

This semester I’m teaching film history classes at Fullerton College.  As much as it pains me to have to teach about this extremely racist film by Southerner D.W. Griffith, I have to do it because of its historical merit. 

The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first epic film of 12 reels during a time when other films only had 4 reels.  Birth of a Nation was a 3-hour epic that held audiences spellbound.  It was a film adaptation of a novel called The Clansman by Thomas Dixon.

The Birth of a Nation was made to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the ending of the Civil War.  The film took place during the war itself from 1861-1865 and during the reconstruction period from 1865-1877.  Griffith portrays the mythological antebellum South as a lost paradise.  The prewar agrarian South represented the final remnants of the old world ideal before falling victim to the industrialization of the north. 

The Birth of a Nation begins by introducing the Cameron family, whose southern tranquility is disturbed by the war.  Abolitionist politicians, northern carpetbaggers, mulattoes, and renegade blacks thwart the Cameron’s attempt to restore their lost paradise.  Ben Cameron is inspired by his Scottish heritage to form a new clan, the Ku Klux Klan, in retaliation for the death of his sister and to protect white women from black rapists.  Over the course of the film, the Klan defeats the black militia, puts an end to black rule, and restores the old agrarian status quo.  The film ends with the celebration of the regeneration of mankind and the return to the ultimate populist paradise. 

The film rendered American history as melodrama and portrayed The Civil War in the form of family melodrama with the villains being northern abolitionists, mulattoes, and blacks.  The ultimate villain in the film is the black race itself.  The introduction of slavery in the first shots in the film lead to the war that turns brother against brother.  The families that were once friends, the southern Camerons and the northern Stonemans, are turned against each other.  The effects of the war are shown with melodrama as one Stoneman boy and two Camerons die during battle. 

Obviously Griffith had an extremely racist message when he created this film.  The resolution of the film is the reuniting of the white race against the common enemy, the black race.  Towards the end of the film, the surviving Camerons and Stoneman take refuge from the black militia and a title card says, “the former enemies of North and South are united again in common defence of their Aryan birthright.” 

The Ku Klux Klan arrives heroically to the music of Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkries to save the whites.  The solution presented by the film is the deportation of the blacks back to Africa.  This action restores the all white order that was disrupted in the beginning of the film when the title card said; “the bringing of the African to America planted the seed of disunion.” 

Griffith has a very slanted point of view of racial relations and of how history should have played out.  The success of the film suggests that it spoke to the viewers about a return to a simpler time.  The film also shows the negative aspects of populist ideology such as racism, anti-intellectualism, paranoia, and religious fundamentalism. 

The film ran for a consecutive 44 weeks at the Liberty Theater in New York City where reserved seats cost $2 each.  It’s success marked the end of the low-end nickelodeons and the raise of the opulent grand theaters.  The film had an extremely racist agenda.  The film depicted the southern perspective Civil War and Reconstruction era and named African Americans and white Northern sympathizers as the villains.  The film did mark the birth of classical Hollywood cinema but unfortunately that birth was grounded in racism. 

Victor Phan
Whittier, CA
March 28, 2011