10. The Birth of a Nation
In 1915 two of Thomas Dixon’s most famous and popular novels, The Leopard’s Spots and The Clansman, served as the basis for a new form of entertainment. D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation first appeared in 1915, depicting the Lost Cause of the South on film for the first time. Centered on the Civil War and Reconstruction, Griffith’s presented the latter as an abysmal failure. Symbolically, the film served as a paean to reconciliation between the white North and South, necessary for the survival of American society as a means of re-establishing control over black Americans. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan was presented as a necessity to protect Southern white womanhood from the indiscriminate ravages of the freed blacks in the South, and by extension, in the North as well.
The film appeared during a period in which statues honoring Confederate leaders and soldiers appeared in cities and towns throughout the former states of the Confederacy, in part due to the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. As more and more Americans in the North came to accept the view of white supremacy expressed by the proponents of the Lost Cause, southern groups led by the UDC established memorials and monuments to the white leaders of the Confederacy. The Birth of a Nation depicted the Confederacy as victims, of white Northern misunderstanding of the problems of race in America, and of Northern aggression as the true cause of the Civil War.