The Northwest enterprise. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1931-1952, 1940-04-26
The Curse of a Nation
By Ralph Matthews
From the Baltimore
Afro-American


Wind" financial and otherwise,
would give rise to a series of pic
lures based on the struggle be-
tween the North and the South.
That is exactly what has hap
pened, and already Hollywood is
busy making plans to revive 1.-THE
Birth of a Nation"
If ever the public should get up
on its hind legs and rebel against
the trash that Hollywood has been
ramming down our unprotesting
Threats in the name of entertain
/ ment, now is the time.
No film caused more racial
strife and rancor during the last
quarter century than 1.-THE Birth of
a Nation" as a silent picture, and
only the arrival of the talkies rele-
gated this evil and vicious race
batting propaganda to the grave of
Anticipated relics.
But so keen are the appetites of
the descendants of the defenders
of tn lost cause, and so anxious
are witness Yankees to sop up the
maudlin sentiment of the Old
South, that this atrocity has been
rugged with sound effects and like
an ugly ghost is now stalking the
earth rafting its chains of intoler-
ance in the ears of a people who
would forget that human slavery
once held America in its grimy
grip.
With the cash registers changing
to the tune of profits from Gone
With The Wind" another hate-pro-
voking epic, it is not surprising
that the greedy eyes of cinema
moguls have turned again to the
Birth of a Nation" and plan to
revive it on a grander and more
colossal scale. Hollywood moves in
cycles, but this is n cycle that
MUST be broken, now.
This is more than a racial ques-
ton; it is a matter of grave ma
tional concern, and the white guar
dams of the Ship of State should
appreciate the danger.
With half the world on fire with
national and racial hatreds, this is
no time to reopen old sores at
home.
With the great powers of Eu-
rope threatened from without by
international gangsterism, based
on the myth of racial superiority,
America will be doing a grave in
justice to its national unity to flood
the motion picture Green of the
nation with themes clarifying the
advocates of disunion and draping
the leaders of rebellion in heroic
garb.
With the world already crushed
under the heel of Nazism, Fascism,
Communism and Imperialism, with
human rights disregarded, civil IL
berries denied with %autocracy ram
pant and personal freedom over
ridden and crushed by the mailed
fist of dictatorship with the aid of
secret police and vicious systems
of espionage, this is no time for
America to invite these gangsters
within u gates by making gla-
diators out of cowardly night rid
ers, vigilants and Ku Kluxers, as is
done in 1.-THE Birth of a Nation
Let us view these things in their
proper perspective, in their rela-
tionship to the nation as a whole.
The leaders of the South were
not American heroes but rebels
and enemies of the United States
just as was Germany an enemy in
1918.
Abraham Lincoln was not only
the liberator of the slaves, but the
symbol of a unified nation of forty
eight states, one and indivisible-
of the people, by the people, and
for the people. Any section or part
of our body polite which refuses
to accept him as such and rever-
ence the things for which he stood
r as much an enemy or our ma
ton as any foreign agent or alien
who seeks to overthrow 60
vernment. Such subversive activi-
ties should be stamped out.
America has long permitted the
tail to wag the dog by allowing
certain cities to rule the nation.
Once New York with its Wall
Street went wild and plunged us
into a depression. Chicago once
took over dominance, and under
the Capones. the Dillingers and
others spread a reign of terror
over us by gangsterism.
Now Hollywood, with its greed
and control over the minds of our
youth, is dragging us toward an
other national catastrophe of Sec
tional hatred and discord.
| This new threat must be headed
| off now We must not have q tale