Beneath its technical achievements, the film villainized Blacks and glorified the Confederacy, helping lead to a violent resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
The KKK 1st appeared during Reconstruction, when Blacks began to vote, gain equal rights, and even hold office. White Southerners—enraged by this progress and the resulting dominance of the pro-#civilrights GOP—responded with violent resistance. #Congress, in turn, passed the “Force Acts” to help #POTUS Grant combat terrorism. But the Klan didn't fully go away until Reconstruction ended, and white supremacists reclaimed power in the South.
Despite using rape, murder, and terror, the KKK was romanticized by director D.W. Griffith in “The Birth of a Nation.” People flocked to theaters and tearfully cheered the film’s climax, when Klansmen rescued white women from Black men (many portrayed by white actors). It was even shown at the #WhiteHouse by Pres. Wilson, who grew up in the Confederacy and claimed the “great Ku Klux Klan” was needed to save the “white South” from the “heel of the black South.”
Even riots and protests couldn't thwart the film’s impact. Klan chapters began popping up, and after #WW1, membership skyrocketed to around 5 million by the 1920s. They promoted antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, nativism, and white supremacy, with believers of the cause using tactics like kidnapping, flogging, acid branding, and hangings.
Political parties did not dare renounce the powerful group, which heavily influenced local and state governments. This monopoly was short-lived, but even as the KKK gradually declined, it continued to draw inspiration from “The Birth of a Nation.” For others, this overshadows any of its artistic achievements, just as it did for W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote, “a new art was used, deliberately, to slander and vilify a race.” It was, thus, “not art, but vicious propaganda.”
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