Editing The Birth of a Nation (section)

===Audience reaction===
[[File:Flora-birth-of-a-nation.jpg|thumb|right|The scene where Flora flees into the forest ''(pictured)'' pursued by the black character Gus moved a viewer to fire shots at the screen to help her.<ref name="ReferenceD"/>]]
''The Birth of a Nation'' was very popular, despite the film's controversy; it was unlike anything that American audiences had ever seen before.<ref>{{cite book|last1=McEwan|first1=Paul|title=The Birth of a Nation |date=2015 |publisher=Palgrave |location=London |isbn=978-1-84457-657-9 |page=12}}</ref> The ''Los Angeles Times'' called it "the greatest picture ever made and the greatest drama ever filmed".<ref>Rylance, David. "Breech Birth: The Receptions To D.W. Griffith's ''The Birth Of A Nation''" pp. 1–20 from ''Australasian Journal of American Studies'', Volume 24, No. 2, December 2005, p. 1.</ref> [[Mary Pickford]] said: "''Birth of a Nation'' was the first picture that really made people take the motion picture industry seriously".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Howe |first=Herbert |date=January 1924 |title=Mary Pickford's Favorite Stars and Films |url=https://archive.org/stream/pho26chic#page/n31/mode/2up |journal=[[Photoplay]] |access-date=September 4, 2015 }}</ref> The producers had 15 "[[detective]]s" at the [[Liberty Theater]] in [[New York City]] "to prevent disorder on the part of those who resent the 'reconstruction period' episodes depicted."<ref>{{cite news|title=News of plays and players|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|date=April 25, 1915|page=2|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30256444/detectives_keeping_order_at_birth_of_a/}}</ref>

The Reverend [[Charles Henry Parkhurst]] argued that the film was not racist, saying that it "was exactly true to history" by depicting freedmen as they were and, therefore, it was a "compliment to the black man" by showing how far black people had "advanced" since Reconstruction.<ref name="Rylance">Rylance, David. "Breech Birth: The Receptions To D.W. Griffith's ''The Birth Of A Nation''" pp. 1–20 from ''Australasian Journal of American Studies'', Volume 24, No. 2, December 2005, pp. 11–12.</ref> Critic Dolly Dalrymple wrote that, "when I saw it, it was far from silent... incessant murmurs of approval, roars of laughter, gasps of anxiety, and outbursts of applause greeted every new picture on the screen".<ref name="ReferenceD">Rylance, David. "Breech Birth: The Receptions To D.W. Griffith's ''The Birth Of A Nation''" pp. 1–20 from ''Australasian Journal of American Studies'', Volume 24, No. 2, December 2005, p. 3.</ref> One man viewing the film was so moved by the scene where Flora Cameron flees Gus to avoid being raped that he took out his handgun and began firing at the screen in an effort to help her.<ref name="ReferenceD"/> [[Katharine DuPre Lumpkin]] recalled watching the film as an 18-year-old in 1915 in her 1947 autobiography ''The Making of a Southerner'': "Here was the black figure—and the fear of the white girl—though the scene blanked out just in time. Here were the sinister men the South scorned and the noble men the South revered. And through it all the Klan rode. All around me people sighed and shivered, and now and then shouted or wept, in their intensity."<ref name=dixon/>