History is Never Politically Correct

Rating: 10/10 (25 October 2006)

You cannot judge this film by today's cultural standards - don't put your own value system on this nearly 100 year old film. JUST BE THANKFUL WE HAVE EVOLVED. It's shocking today to see such a view point because victors (re)write the history books where the ravages of Reconstruction have been all but eradicated. Only 50 years after the war, Griffith had reasons to choose and Dixon had reasons to write The Clansman.
The movie wasn't made for the glory of the clan, but of the "necessity" of the FIRST clan as a response to the stealing of lands by Federal Officers, as the Kentucky Griffith family well knew. How Reconstruction went in your southern neck of the woods depended on who your Officer was. If he wasn't bought off by Carpetbaggers and Scalawags, you might keep your house by paying semi-inflated taxes; if he was bought off, God help you- you were out, (that's why so many houses had GTT painted on them - Gone To Texas). Lee said he never would have surrendered if he had know what Thad. Stevens (Stoneman in the film) and Edmund Stanton had planned with misnomered reconstruction. The bitterness from the vengeance of Reconstruction is what precipitated Jim Crow which never would have happened if the Confederacy had been allowed to secede. The Confederacy never would have lasted more than 20 years because of in-fighting. For economic reasons each state would come back into the Union one by one. To be reinstated each state would have had come in without slavery which was on its way out due to the industrial age. Thus there wouldn't have been the loss of life or bitterness against blacks that Reconstruction itself precipitated. With only a few other places, it was mainly in South Carolina where the legislature was taken over by blacks who in the main did not have any education and were the puppets for the Scalawags (white republicans). Historical fact: South Carolina was purposely made the most to suffer (including Sherman's March which was worse in SC than GA) for leaving the Union first.
According to Griffith's film, Birth of a Nation was born in that little cabin when North and South had to defend themselves from a negr0 takeover (the film's words) - thus the clan to the rescue. (Being thrown out for taxes was more common.) Unfortunately the film, shown for 44 straight months in New York alone, caused the rise of the second KKK which had the most members in Ohio and Indiana in the 20s and 30s. After a scandal with the Imperial Wizard of Indiana, clan membership decreased with hold-outs in the South into the 50s and 60s. It was smashed in the 70s with today's off-shoot of ne0-Nazis. You can be sure the KKK is dead because they never would have allowed today's Mexican immigration into the USA and there have not been vigilantes throwing them out with cross burnings, hangings and the like atrocities.
To see the variety of plantation life read Frederick Olmstead's tour of and titled book 'Slave States,' to understand plantation politics. This dedicated abolitionist in today's terms would be considered blatantly racist. But you have to remember that the 'rebellion' started as fight to leave the Union and Northerners were fighting to keep the South in the Union, the fight was not about Slavery. Lincoln emancipated the slaves - a campaign promise he went back on, he said he wouldn't - and only in the South, not for (Grant's) slaves in the North. In 1863 seasoned Yankee fighters left in droves when their 2 year enlistment was up because they were fighting for the Union, not for abolition. Scorsese covered the riots that happened in New York because of the Lincoln's draft in 'Gangs of New York.'
Southern California in 1915 was not very populated, especially by blacks. The film industry had just moved there. "Holidays" were instituted for whole populations of nearby towns to be extras in films. (If you've been an extra you know that where you get placed in a set does not give you a clue as to what's going on in the movie or the script.) There were still a few minstrel shows left, black face was still semi-popular, even blacks put on black face to do their own minstrel shows. It was from this tradition that the not rare black face was used in the film, but also know that these were seasoned actors who knew how to take direction and "act," it wasn't because a black person was excluded, even though it would have been too much for audiences to have seen a white woman falling into the arms of a real black man in 1915 (only 50 years after the war)  note: mammy's were OK, but this film's mammy was a man in black face in order act in "her" fight scene (Hattie McDaniels was not in Hollywood yet, there wasn't even a Hollywood yet). Even integrating real blacks in the film, rather than just whites in black face was considered controversial in 1914.
I'm a historian from ultra-liberal San Francisco, so don't call me a racist. History is never politically correct, but it IS written by the victors. That is why it is so shocking today to see this view point, which by the way was then banned in several places, including Boston, and there were plenty of protests at the time. Griffith's father, a colonel in the confederate army, had seen first hand the ravages of war and reconstruction. Only because Griffith was the first director with the ability to produce such extensive film, was he able to decided what to put on film.
Griffith's next film, 'Intolerance,' was his reaction to 'Birth's ...' criticism. If you would see 'Intolerance' before 'Birth...', by today's standards you would say, "What foresight!" (against the death penalty - of the innocent) and much more, his best film).