Cleveland [Ohio] Advocate
September 25, 1915.
The African-American Experience in Ohio

On Febuary 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith's controversial silent film, The Birth of a Nation, premiered in Los Angeles, California. Released under the title, The Clansman, the movie debuted only after Griffith sought an injunction from the court. Although local censors approved the film, city council members responded to concerns about the racist nature of the picture by ordering it suppressed.

"Elliot & Sherman Film Corp Present D.W. Griffith's…The Birth of a Nation."
Milwaukee
Riverside Printing Co., 1915.
Prints and Photographs Division

Griffith's story centers on two white families torn apart by the Civil War and reunited by what one subtitle calls, "common defence of their Aryan birthright." Promoting a skewed historical vision of a wartorn South further abused by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and radical Republicans, the film remakes Lincoln as a friend of the South. "I shall deal with them as though they had never been away," Griffith's Lincoln says. In The Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan rushes in to fill the void left by Lincoln's untimely death and the chaos of Reconstruction.

Ambitious in its reach, Part I of the film begins in the antebellum period, takes viewers across bloody battlefields of the Civil War, through the burning of Atlanta, and ends with the assassination of Lincoln. Yet, the director never loses sight of the human side of these sweeping events—at least where white Southerners are concerned. The movie is as famous for its tender portrayal of family life as its imaginative use of the camera.

The Birth of a Nation advanced the art of cinema even as it enshrined racist stereotypes and historical myth in the new and powerful medium of film. Assisted by cameraman Billy Bitzer, Griffith packed his film with a virtual catalog of innovative film techniques. The Birth of a Nation introduced or remastered total-screen close-ups, night photography, outdoor photography, fade-out, panoramic long shots, as well as liberal use of cross-cutting between scenes to build suspense. Surgical editing and imaginative camera work were necessary to propel Griffith's three-hour-long epic. The film cost $500,000, employed 18,000 actors and 3000 horses, and required meticulous recreation of historic details.

"NAACP Protests the Screening of the Movie 'Birth of a Nation.'"
New York City, New York, 1947
Prints and Photographs Division

The NAACP immediately and effectively protested the film. Laden with stereotypes of happy slaves and lazy freedmen, and racist assumptions that African-American sexuality was inherently lascivious, The Birth of a Nation was considered a dangerous film. The crime of lynching black men, usually on trumped-up charges of sexual assault, remained a very real concern in 1915 and Griffith's movie effectively portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as a defender of endangered white womanhood. Protest groups had the film suppressed in several places and Griffith quickly edited out some of the most egregious scenes including a segment depicting the castration of an accused rapist.

As the movie circulated the country during the late 1910s, protest groups managed to prevent showings in a variety of locales including Ohio, West Virginia, and New York City. As late as the 1940s, the NAACP continued to picket the film and its efforts led the film industry to add prohibitions against ethnic slurs to its production code. Also, countering the film's negative stereotypes spurred African-American film making.

Not surprisingly, uproar over The Birth of a Nation failed to prevent success at the box office. The film remains among the most profitable movies ever made. However, heightened sensitivity to Griffith's racist viewpoint caused many who initially praised the movie to retract their statements. Contrary to the director's intent, The Birth of a Nation reveals more about early twentieth-century race relations than it tells us about the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Still, the film's contribution to the art of movie making is undeniable and continues to be acknowledged through inclusion on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress and the American Film Institutes's list of the One Hundred Greatest Movies.

" The Perfect Song"
Love Strain from D.W. Griffith's Gigantic Spectacle The Birth of a Nation
words by Clarence Lucas, music Joseph Carl Breil, 1915.
Historic American Sheet Music: 1850-1920

Learn more about the people and controversy surrounding The Birth of a Nation.

• Use the collection The African-American Experience in Ohio to learn more about attempts to ban the film. Search on the term The Birth of a Nation to locate newspaper articles like "We'll Fight to the End Against 'Birth of Nation'" detailing organizational efforts at the local level. See also, "'Birth of a Nation' Answered By Comfort Committee's Film." This Cleveland [Ohio] Advocate column calls the movie Loyalty of a Race "a wonderfully gripping, appealing, and effective movie picture [that] will effectually answer that vile film, 'The Birth of a Nation.'"
• Read Today in History features on Griffith's colleagues and friends—cameraman Billy Bitzer and the Gish Sisters.
• Prior to his career as a director, D. W. Griffith acted in several films including "The Sculptor's Nightmare." View this short comedy through the collection Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film.
• Find additional early films through the collection Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies.

Up, Up, and Away…

Prof. Thaddeus S. Lowe Observing the Battle From His Balloon Intrepid,
Fair Oaks, Virginia, May 31, 1862.
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865

Jules Verne, author of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days, was born on February 8, 1828 in Nantes, France. His depictions of fantastic technological advances, including space travel and television, helped create the genre of science fiction. Inspired by Verne's popular novel, Around the World in Eighty Days, American reporter Nellie Bly bested the record of fictional Phileas Fogg, when she completed her 1889-90 circumnavigation in just 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds.

In 1863, French readers were enjoying Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon. Simultaneously, the United States Army was using balloons lofted by hydrogen gas in Civil War reconnaissance missions. The May 31, 1862 photograph above shows Prof. Thaddeus S. Lowe observing a Peninsular Campaign battle from a balloon anchored by soldiers on the ground. After the war, balloons were used to create detailed images, called "bird's-eye views," of parks, cities, and even the fairgrounds of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia.

The Centennial—Balloon View of the Grounds,
from photographs by R. Newell & Sons and sketches by Theo. R. Davis, 1876.
Map Collections (1500-Present)
Click on the map and use the MrSID viewer to appreciate this incredibly detailed engraving. Can you find Horticulture Hall?

Airships, or dirigibles, offered greater control over flight. Essentially motors mounted on helium or hydrogen filled balloons, airships contained propellers and rudders for steering the craft. By the early twentieth century, photographers used airships to create aerial photographs of U.S. cities. During World War I, rigid German airships, called "Zeppelins," were used to bomb London and Paris.

Unfortunately, airships were accident prone. The crash of the Hindenburg, the largest rigid airship ever made, on May 6, 1937 essentially ended the use of dirigibles in commercial transportation. Ultimately, the airship gave way to the success of the Wright Brothers' heavier-than-air flying machine.

• The sight of these imposing ships is lost to many of us today. As a result, the images of airships in the American Memory collections are of special value. To view them, search the pictorial collections on airship.
• Search on balloon in the American Memory motion picture collections to find films such as Bird's-eye view of San Francisco, Cal., from a Balloon and Panoramic View of Electric Tower from a Balloon. The bibliographic records tell how the balloons were used.

Army Blimp
at Lincoln Memorial,
Washington, D.C.,
Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-circa 1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

• The Library of Congress contains the largest Verne holdings outside of France. Some 400 rare Verne volumes, donated by Willis E. Hurd, make up the core of the collection. Through copyright deposit, the Library acquired many early English-language editions of Verne's stories. The Library's collections also include plays, films, and television productions adapted from Verne's works. Using the Library's online Catalog, perform an Author search on Verne, Jules to see records of these items.
• Alexander Graham Bell and Harry Houdini were among those fascinated by human flight during the early twentieth century. Read Today in History features on these men as well as famous aviator Charles Lindbergh.
• Known as "Lady Lindy," Amelia Earhart made her solo flight across the Atlantic on May 20-21, 1932. In 1935, she became the first person to complete the even longer flight from Hawaii to California. Palmist Nellie Simmons Meie prepared an Earhart palm print and character analysis in June 1933. This unusual document is available through the collection Words and Deeds in American History.

ZR3 Entering Hangar,
Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, New Jersey, circa 1924.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991