The Birth of a Nation

A detailed Summary of The Birth of a Nation


The Birth of a Nation: Does the Portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan In this controversial 1915 film compare to documented history of the organization?

D.W. Griffith was raised in South Carolina by his father who was an ex-confederate soldier. Griffith was raised to believe that father's views on the superiority white race and the strength of the Confederacy were the natural and correct beliefs. And, when his father joined the Ku Klux Klan, the young boy was introduced to a magnified degree of racism and white supremacy. However, he was blinded from the reality of the situation. When Griffith created the film, "Birth of a Nation," he based it on a glorified version of the KKK and their attempt to preserve the peace of the Confederacy, but fails to show the horrors created by the organization during their crusade.

In the film, "Birth of a Nation," it is explained how when the blacks are given a right to vote, and an election for a senator takes place. A power-hungry mulatto man was elected. The Clan agreed that he had triggered the "fermentation of their peaceful state." They believed the blacks were electing leaders who were destroying the C


At another point of the film, the Mulatto Senator passed a bill that legalized the relationships between blacks and whites. After the bill was passed, one black man tried to rape a young teen girl, and she fell to her death from a cliff in an attempt to escape him. The victim's brother, a Klansmen, enlisted townsmen to search for the accused rapist, so "that he may be given a fair trial in the dim halls of the Invisible Empire." Historically, the black men accused of rape, were given unfair trials, or in most cases, no trial at all. The suspected rapists, most of them being innocent, were lynched, battered, tortured, whipped, or mutilated. In fact, more often than not, members of the Klan accused innocent blacks of rape for an excuse to harm them. Seldom was a black accused of rape actually guilty. In the film, scenes such as the one described above helped the viewers come to the conclusion that the Klan was protecting the Confederate women by punishing black men, giving the Klan yet another heroic glow. However, the brutality of the punishment was not shown. In addition, in no instances in the film were the black men suspected of illegal s

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