Editing The Birth of a Nation (section)

==Modern reception==
===Critical response===
[[File:Roger Ebert cropped.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[Roger Ebert]] deemed ''The Birth of a Nation'' "a great film that argues for evil".]]

Released in 1915, ''The Birth of a Nation'' has been considered as innovative among its contemporaries in the early days of film. According to the film historian [[Kevin Brownlow]], the film was "astounding in its time" and initiated "so many advances in film-making technique that it was rendered obsolete within a few years".<ref>Brownlow, Kevin (1968). ''The Parade's Gone By...''. University of California Press, p. 78. {{ISBN|0520030680}}.</ref> The content of the work, however, has received widespread criticism for its blatant racism. Film critic [[Roger Ebert]] wrote:

<blockquote>Certainly ''The Birth of a Nation'' (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old [[minstrel show]] or a vile comic pamphlet.<ref name="Ebert">{{cite news|last=Ebert|first=Roger|title=The Birth of a Nation (1915)|url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-birth-of-a-nation-1915|work=[[RogerEbert.com]]|access-date=August 5, 2019|date=March 30, 2003|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110224005516/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20030330%2FREVIEWS08%2F303300301%2F1023|archive-date=February 24, 2011|df=mdy-all}}</ref> </blockquote>

Despite its controversial story, the film has been praised by film critics, with Ebert mentioning its use as a historical tool: "''The Birth of a Nation'' is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like [[Leni Riefenstahl|Riefenstahl]]'s ''[[Triumph of the Will]]'', it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil."<ref name=Ebert/>

According to a 2002 article in the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915.<ref>[http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/316.html Hartford-HWP.com] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201234509/http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/316.html |date=February 1, 2017 }}, A Painful Present as Historians Confront a Nation's Bloody Past.</ref> [[History.com]] states that "There is no doubt that ''Birth of a Nation'' played no small part in winning wide public acceptance" for the KKK, and that throughout the film "African Americans are portrayed as brutish, lazy, morally degenerate, and dangerous."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/birth-of-a-nation-opens|title=Birth of A Nation Opens|website=history.com|publisher=A+E Networks|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161129021913/http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/birth-of-a-nation-opens|archive-date=November 29, 2016}}</ref> [[David Duke]] used the film to recruit Klansmen in the 1970s.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation|title=100 Years Later, What's The Legacy Of 'Birth Of A Nation'?|website=[[NPR]]|date=February 8, 2015|access-date=February 26, 2018}}</ref>

In 2013, the American critic [[Richard Brody]] wrote ''The Birth of a Nation'' was:

<blockquote>... a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art—in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality. It's tempting to think of the film's influence as evidence of the inherent corruption of realism as a cinematic mode—but it's even more revealing to acknowledge the disjunction between its beauty, on the one hand, and, on the other, its injustice and falsehood. The movie's fabricated events shouldn't lead any viewer to deny the historical facts of slavery and Reconstruction. But they also shouldn't lead to a denial of the peculiar, disturbingly exalted beauty of ''Birth of a Nation'', even in its depiction of immoral actions and its realization of blatant propaganda. The worst thing about ''The Birth of a Nation'' is how good it is. The merits of its grand and enduring aesthetic make it impossible to ignore and, despite its disgusting content, also make it hard not to love. And it's that very conflict that renders the film all the more despicable, the experience of the film more of a torment—together with the acknowledgment that Griffith, whose short films for Biograph were already among the treasures of world cinema, yoked his mighty talent to the cause of hatred (which, still worse, he sincerely depicted as virtuous).<ref name="Brody"/></blockquote>

Brody also argued that Griffith unintentionally undercut his own thesis in the film, citing the scene before the Civil War when the Cameron family offers up lavish hospitality to the Stoneman family who travel past mile after mile of slaves working the cotton fields of South Carolina to reach the Cameron home. Brody maintained that a modern audience can see that the wealth of the Camerons comes from the slaves, forced to do back-breaking work picking the cotton. Likewise, Brody argued that the scene where people in South Carolina celebrate the Confederate victory at the [[First Battle of Bull Run|Battle of Bull Run]] by dancing around the "eerie flare of a bonfire" implies "a dance of death", foreshadowing the destruction of [[Sherman's March to the Sea|Sherman's March]] that was to come. In the same way, Brody wrote that the scene where the Klan dumps Gus's body off at the doorstep of Lynch is meant to have the audience cheering, but modern audiences find the scene "obscene and horrifying". Finally, Brody argued that the end of the film, where the Klan prevents defenseless African Americans from exercising their right to vote by pointing guns at them, today seems "unjust and cruel".<ref name="Brody"/>

In an article for ''[[The Atlantic]]'', film critic [[Ty Burr]] deemed ''The Birth of a Nation'' the most influential film in history while criticizing its portrayal of black men as savage.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/what-was-the-most-influential-film-in-history/513863/|title=What Was the Most Influential Film in History?|website=[[The Atlantic]]|date=March 2017|access-date=February 26, 2018}}</ref> [[Richard Corliss]] of ''Time'' wrote that Griffith "established in the hundreds of one- and two-reelers he directed a cinematic textbook, a fully formed visual language, for the generations that followed. More than anyone else—more than all others combined—he invented the film art. He brought it to fruition in ''The Birth of a Nation''." Corliss praised the film's "brilliant storytelling technique" and noted that "''The Birth of a Nation'' is nearly as antiwar as it is antiblack. The Civil War scenes, which consume only 30 minutes of the extravaganza, emphasize not the national glory but the human cost of combat. ... Griffith may have been a racist politically, but his refusal to find uplift in the South's war against the Union—and, implicitly, in any war at all—reveals him as a cinematic humanist."<ref name=time>{{cite news|url=https://time.com/3729807/d-w-griffiths-the-birth-of-a-nation-10/|title=D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation 100 Years Later: Still Great, Still Shameful|last=Corliss|first=Richard|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|date=March 3, 2015|access-date=March 4, 2018}}</ref>

===Accolades===
In 1992, the U.S. [[Library of Congress]] deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the [[National Film Registry]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-01-04-ca-864-story.html|title='The Birth of a Nation' Documents History|date=1993-01-04|website=Los Angeles Times|language=en-US|access-date=2020-04-22}}</ref> The [[American Film Institute]] ranked it #44 within the [[AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies]] list in 1998.<ref>{{cite news|title=AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/features/afi100list.htm|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|date=1998|access-date=August 8, 2024}}</ref>

===Historical portrayal===
The film remains controversial due to its interpretation of American history. [[University of Houston]] historian [[Steven Mintz]] summarizes its message as follows: "[[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] was an unmitigated disaster, African-Americans could never be [[racial integration|integrated]] into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government".<ref>{{cite web|first=Steven|last=Mintz|url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slaveryfilm.cfm|title= Slavery in film: The Birth of a Nation (1915)|website=Digital History|access-date=November 18, 2018|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051212055821/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/slaveryfilm.cfm|archive-date=December 12, 2005 }}</ref> The South is portrayed as a victim. The first overt mentioning of the war is the scene in which Abraham Lincoln signs the call for the first 75,000 volunteers. However, the first aggression in the Civil War, made when the Confederate troops fired on [[Fort Sumter]] in 1861, is not mentioned in the film.<ref>{{harvnb|Stokes|2007|p=184}}.</ref> The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the postwar South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and [[carpetbagger|carpetbagging]] [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] politicians from the North. This is similar to the [[Dunning School]] of historiography which was current in academe at the time.<ref>{{harvnb|Stokes|2007|pp=190–91}}.</ref> The film is slightly less extreme than the books upon which it is based, in which Dixon misrepresented Reconstruction as a nightmarish time when black men ran amok, storming into weddings to rape white women with impunity.<ref name=dixon>{{cite web| last = Leiter| first = Andrew| title = Thomas Dixon, Jr.: Conflicts in History and Literature| publisher = Documenting the American South| date = 2004| url = http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html| access-date = July 21, 2017| url-status = live| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170228142801/http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html| archive-date = February 28, 2017| df = mdy-all}}</ref>

The film portrayed President Abraham Lincoln as a friend of the South and refers to him as "the Great Heart".<ref>{{harvnb|Stokes|2007|p=188}}.</ref> The two romances depicted in the film, Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman, reflect Griffith's retelling of history. The couples are used as a metaphor, representing the film's broader message of the need for the reconciliation of the North and South to defend white supremacy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://filmracepolitics.weebly.com/blog|title=The Birth of a Nation: The Significance of Love, Romance, and Sexuality|date=March 6, 2015|publisher=Weebly|access-date=August 22, 2015|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208165535/http://filmracepolitics.weebly.com/blog|archive-date=December 8, 2015}}</ref> Among both couples, there is an attraction that forms before the war, stemming from the friendship between their families. With the war, however, both families are split apart, and their losses culminate in the end of the war with the defense of white supremacy. One of the intertitles clearly sums up the message of unity: "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/SalterBirth.htm|title=The Birth of a Nation as American Myth|first=Richard C.|last=Salter|website=The Journal of Religion and Film|series=Vol. 8, No. 2|date=October 2004|access-date=August 22, 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150622205145/http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/SalterBirth.htm|archive-date=June 22, 2015}}</ref>

The film further reinforced the popular belief held by whites, especially in the South, of Reconstruction as a disaster. In his 1929 book ''The Tragic Era: The Revolution After Lincoln'', [[Claude Bowers]] treated ''The Birth of a Nation'' as a factually accurate account of Reconstruction.<ref name=Franklin/>{{rp|432}} In ''The Tragic Era'', Bowers presented every black politician in the South as corrupt, portrayed Republican Representative [[Thaddeus Stevens]] as a vicious "[[race traitor]]" intent upon making blacks the equal of whites, and praised the Klan for "saving civilization" in the South.<ref name=Franklin/>{{rp|432}} Bowers wrote about black empowerment that the worst sort of "scum" from the North like Stevens "inflamed the Negro's egoism and soon the lustful assaults began. Rape was the foul daughter of Reconstruction!"<ref name=Franklin/>{{rp|432}}

===Academic assessment===
Historian [[E. Merton Coulter]] treated ''The Birth of a Nation'' as historically correct and painted a vivid picture of "black beasts" running amok, encouraged by alcohol-sodden, corrupt and vengeful black Republican politicians.<ref name=Franklin/>{{rp|432}}

[[File:Thaddeus Stevens - Brady-Handy-crop.jpg|left|thumb|upright|The character of Congressman Stoneman in the film echoes [[Thaddeus Stevens]] (''pictured''), one of the two most powerful Radical Republicans of the 1860s.]]
Veteran film reviewer [[Roger Ebert]] wrote:

<blockquote>... stung by criticisms that the second half of his masterpiece was racist in its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its brutal images of blacks, Griffith tried to make amends in ''Intolerance'' (1916), which criticized prejudice. And in ''[[Broken Blossoms]]'' he told perhaps the first [[Miscegenation|interracial love]] story in the movies—even though, to be sure, it's an idealized love with no touching.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20000123/REVIEWS08/1230301/1023|title=Great Movies: 'Broken Blossoms'|last=Ebert|first=Roger|date=January 23, 2000|publisher=Rogerebert.suntimes.com|access-date=July 3, 2013|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004011203/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20000123%2FREVIEWS08%2F1230301%2F1023|archive-date=October 4, 2012|df=mdy-all}}</ref></blockquote>

Despite some similarities between the Congressman Stoneman character and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of [[Pennsylvania]], Rep. Stevens did not have the family members described and did not move to South Carolina during Reconstruction. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1868. However, Stevens's biracial housekeeper, [[Lydia Hamilton Smith]], was considered his common-law wife, and was generously provided for in his will.<ref>[[Marc Egnal|Egnal, Marc]] (2009). ''Clash of Extremes''.</ref>

In the film, Abraham Lincoln is portrayed in a positive light due to his belief in conciliatory postwar policies toward Southern whites. The president's views are opposite those of Austin Stoneman, a character presented in a negative light, who acts as an antagonist. The assassination of Lincoln marks the transition from war to Reconstruction, each of which periods has one of the two "acts" of the film.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://boothiebarn.com/2013/06/15/the-assassination-in-the-birth-of-a-nation/|title=The Assassination in 'The Birth of a Nation'|last=|date=June 15, 2013|website=BoothieBarn|access-date=June 22, 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170715103923/https://boothiebarn.com/2013/06/15/the-assassination-in-the-birth-of-a-nation/|archive-date=July 15, 2017}}</ref> In including the assassination, the film also establishes to the audience that the plot of the movie has historical basis.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/reel_new/films/list/0_68_9_123|title=Reel American History – Films – List|last=University|first=Library and Technology Services, Lehigh|website=digital.lib.lehigh.edu|access-date=June 22, 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151015004629/http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/reel_new/films/list/0_68_9_123|archive-date=October 15, 2015}}</ref> Franklin wrote the film's depiction of Reconstruction as a hellish time when black freedmen ran amok, raping and killing whites with impunity until the Klan stepped in is not supported by the facts. Instead, most freed slaves continued to work for their former masters in Reconstruction for the want of a better alternative and, though relations between freedmen and their former masters were not friendly, very few freedmen sought revenge against the people who had enslaved them.<ref name=Franklin>{{cite journal|last=Franklin|first=John Hope|title=''The Birth of a Nation'': Propaganda as History|pages=417–434|journal=[[Massachusetts Review]]|volume=20|number=3|jstor=25088973|date=Autumn 1979}}</ref>{{rp|427–428}}

The depictions of mass Klan paramilitary actions did not have historical equivalents. However, there were incidents in 1871 where Klan groups traveled from other areas in fairly large numbers to aid localities in disarming local companies of the all-black portion of the state militia, and the organized Klan continued activities as small groups of "night riders".<ref>West, Jerry Lee (2002). ''The Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan in York County, South Carolina, 1865–1877'', p. 67.</ref>

The [[civil rights movement]] of the 1960s inspired a new generation of historians, such as scholar [[Eric Foner]], who led a reassessment of Reconstruction. Building on [[Black Reconstruction in America|W. E. B. DuBois' work]], but also adding new sources, they focused on achievements of the African American and white Republican coalitions, such as establishment of universal public education and charitable institutions in the South and extension of voting rights to black men. In response, the Southern-dominated [[History of the Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] and its affiliated white militias used extensive terrorism, intimidation and even assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voters in the 1870s and thereby to regain power in the South.<ref>[[Nicholas Lemann|Lemann, Nicholas]] (2006). ''Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War''. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, pp. 150–154.</ref>