In 1915, D.W. Griffith’s ground-breaking film,The Birth of a Nation, transformed the terrorist Ku Klux Klan into a noble endeavor. William Monroe Trotter, a Boston-area African American newspaper editor and civil rights activist, began a resistance movement against the film. Below is an excerpt from the documentary Birth of a Movement, which tells how Trotter organized protests against the film. The documentary is based on Dick Lehr's book The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights, and “captures the backdrop to this prescient clash between human rights, freedom of speech, and a changing media landscape.” The full documentary will premiere on Feb. 6, 2017, at 10 p.m on Independent Lens on PBS.
At Independent Lens, Susan Gray and Bestor Cram write:
Griffith originally titled his three-hour epic The Clansman, based on a novel and play of the same name, but changed it to The Birth of a Nation to reflect the director's belief his work gave the true story of America's "Reconstruction." Set during the Civil War, it was told from a point of view sympathetic to the Confederacy, and its portrayal of African American men was controversial even then, painting them as unintelligent and sexually aggressive, while members of the KKK were shown as valiant heroes protecting the innocent. (The film's release led to a spike in membership for the Klan.) Birth of a Nation was one of the first motion pictures screened at the White House, and white film audiences made it a box office hit, but in each city it traveled to it was also met with protests by African Americans, including by the newly formed NAACP which attempted to ban the film.
These protests were led by Trotter, the first African American Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard University and editor of The Guardian newspaper [a black publication]. A Northern intellectual and contemporary of W.E.B. Dubois, Trotter was positioning himself as a leading voice in a fractured civil rights movement.
Birth of a Movement features interviews with Spike Lee (whose NYU student film The Answer was a response to Griffith’s film), Reginald Hudlin, DJ Spooky, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Dick Lehr, while exploring how Griffith’s film — long taught in film classes as an innovative work of genius — motivated generations of African American filmmakers and artists as they worked to reclaim their history and their onscreen image.
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
“To criticize one’s country is to do it a service … Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism—a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.”
—William J. Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, 1966
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Today's "don't ask, don't tell" hearing:
In what Carl Levin (D-MI) described as a "profile in leadership," today Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen gave a stirring personal statement in support of repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy
But as expected, during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Defense Secretary Gates and Mullen announced that the Pentagon would begin a yearlong study to determine how to end the military's discriminatory "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
And at the same time, several Republican opposition themes emerged: we can't do this while we're in the middle of two wars, they understand that the witnesses are just following orders from their Leftist-in-Chief, or that Gates and Mullen are biased and will exert undue influence on their subordinates to get the results they want. Take your pick.
So, why will it take a year of reviews, studies and surveys to decide that saying "none of your damned business" is the only policy they need?
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin lends a hand with the daily “Dammit, Donald!” Disaster Roundup: foreign leader phone calls, Black History Month and covering for white nationalists. Then, a KITM explainer on the nuclear option used to clear nominees in the face of Dem boycotts.
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