Essay about Birth of a Nation

Ku Klux Klan also has a main role in this movie. They are very strong together. They are cold blooded murders and just want to get rid of the black people. They have a high status in society, mainly because no one has the courage to do anything to them.

Birth of a Nation uses its histrionic plot to show how tangled destinies of a southern and northern family before and after the Civil War. It willingly portrays southern blacks as spiteful and uncivil, the northern whites as crafty, dishonest, and conceited, and the film’s southern whites as anguish recurrent radical and erotic mortifications at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before factually being saved by the thoughtful, Ku Klux Klan. The film is divided to show the different aspects of those two sides during this historical time. During this time Africans were coming to America and it started the reconstruction on our country. D.W. Griffith made this film to show us the reality of racism at this point in time.

There are three distinct historical interpretations of the Klan as an organization. The first historical interpretations argue that the Klan was established as an organization answering to a society in need of help with maintaining social order and law. Historians within this interpretation emphasize the playfulness and theatrical nature of the Klan which is unique to this particular historical perspective. This era of interpretation focuses very little on the violence that the Klan inflicted on Southern society, often completely eliminating its violent accounts from their historical works. The second historical interpretations argue that the Klan was established as a racially motivated political organization. Historians argued that because of the Klan’s origins as a racially motivated organization, the Klan would go on to establish political dominance and control over much of Southern society. The third and final historical interpretation argues that the Ku Klux Klan was established as a result to a struggling plantation system. Within this historical era of interpretation, Michael W. Fitzgerald describes the Klan as a non-violent enforcer that was created to control petty theft and labor riots. The establishment of the Klan as a political organization with race

And in 1915 the NAACP held a nationwide campaign against the film by D.W. Griffifth called The Birth of a Nation. This film was made to glorify the Ku Klux Klan.

Given the film’s early accomplishments, one is left to wonder why it was named after something that is so controversial and still debated to this day. Almost more than a century ago, D.W. Griffith’s film forever changed the industry of filmmaking with not only its groundbreaking innovative applications of the camera such as close-ups, zooming, crosscutting, all of which heightened the power, the impact, and the emotion of the drama, but also lit up the screen with racist images that will always embarrass and provoke the people of America today (I hope). Hence, the foundation of white supremacy in films was born.

The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith

It seems that all the harsh and brutal wrongdoings that the KKK committed during that time became somewhat like a norm to the citizens whom it affected. In one newspaper clipping it’s discussing how they there were extra peaches for the neighbors and then just lines underneath it, there are threats to their life. It reads, “Syles you have got to leave this naborhood vary soon or you may prepair for death hell and the grave” It’s surprising how it was even allowed to be published, but more so, it’s placed near something so insignificant in comparison, peaches, and it’s the standard of the time. In a letter that one man wrote to his friend, he explains how the KKK “shot one very bad negro, putting six balls through his head.” He is taking

In the movie, the size of the KKK meeting would make one infer that it was a large and prevalent force during the great depression which was not true. The KKK had a large population in the 1910’s and 1920’s, however it dwindled near the end of the decade. Journalists like Grover Hall Sr. shined an embarrassing light on the KKK which helped diminish the group’s popularity. There was a group called the Big Mule/Black Belt alliance whose mission was to dismantle the political power of the KKK. There was only a small group of members at the start of the 1930’s. The KKK did not receive another rise in popularity until 1950’s after Brown v Board of Education

A battle that the group has had was after a series of early court battles, including a victory against a discriminatory Oklahoma law that regulated voting by means of a grandfather clause (Guinn v. United States, 1910), helped establish the NAACP’s importance as a legal advocate. The fledgling organization also learned to harness the power of publicity through its 1915 battle against D. W. Griffith’s inflammatory Birth of a Nation, a motion picture that perpetuates demeaning stereotypes of African Americans and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. The NAACP used its extreme strength in numbers to fight the horrific idea of Ku Klux Klan glorification.

Confederation- it is a union of countries who are allied together by some political power

The turn of the 20th century was an important time for the history of cinema. With the implementation of appealing movie stars and extravagant sets, Hollywood had found a new formula for success in the form of blockbuster films. The Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W Griffith, being one of the first feature-length films of its time, was heralded for both its technical advancements and aesthetic appeal. Despite being criticized for its racist legacy, The Birth of a Nation, set what would become the new standard for Hollywood blockbuster films in film production techniques.

The Birth of a Nation was released on October 7, 2016. It has grossed $15,803,772 (boxfficemojo.com) almost doubling its production budget of $8.5 million. As historians try their best with other historical facts, The Birth of a Nation has its part of fictional moments. Historians may be able to list events in chronological order to help inform readers, but if not every moment and conversation had been documented, historians can only fill in the blanks. This is the case with the Nat Turner film because not everything had been documented. It was pleasing to see some film producers in Hollywood are trying to be honest about diversity and slavery. Many people, who knew of Nat Turner, had general knowledge of the insurrection and its legacy. There

plot, he intended to dig far deeper than that, into the realm of a clever

When I was watching the documentary “the 13th and seeing everybody view on the War on Drugs a movement, had me questing if the War on Drugs law were Racially Motivated by President Nixon? Many people believe that the War on Drugs was literally a war on Blacks. In 1865 the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was pass. The amendment made it unconstitutional for someone to be held as a slave. AKA it grants freedom for all Americans. Except criminals, but here the problem after slave was ended African Americans had nowhere to go and could not get jobs because they was uneducated. African Americans were arrested in masse, they were for extremely minor crimes like loitering or vagrancy. People who were arrested was treated like slave ever after the

In 1915, D.W.Griffith released The Birth of a Nation. It’s a three-hour black and white film without sound which depict the reconstruction in South Carolina. In this epic, the Negroes and the white republicans attempt to seize control of the state government while the Ku Klux Klan have saved the states. The film unleased racist violence and hence was banned in Pasadena, California. The sound version of the Birth of a nation was released in 1930