Birth of a Nation, The Klan,
and the Rise of Racism
To fully understand the impact of Birth of a Nation you need to know a little of the history of the KKK. The KKK was a brutal terrorist organization founded in 1866 for the purpose of strengthening white supremacy in the defeated Confederacy and using violence to suppress any attempt at Black equality. Between 1866 and 1872, it unleashed a campaign of terror that left between 2,000 and 3,000 dead and countless others brutalized. The KKK attacked Blacks as well as any whites who supported them, particularly school teachers. The federal government, under the presidency of the corrupt and deeply racist Andrew Johnson turned a blind eye to the activities of the Klan. When Grant came to power in 1869 he used federal power to suppress the Klan and jail many of its members. The Klan was destroyed and officially disbanded in 1872. Although violence against Blacks certainly continued, there was no KKK in the United States for the rest of the 19th century and into the early 20th century. However, among white Southerners the Klan was both remembered and romanticized.
The picture at the left is from an 1868 magazine and shows typical Klan robes of that era. The 20th century KKK and all of the symbolism and paraphranalia that goes with it is directly related to Birth of a Nation. The KKK was refounded in 1915 by William Joseph Simmons (1880-1945). Simmons was directly inspired by Birth of a Nation which he watched repeatedly before getting the idea of refounding the Klan. He and his followers and imitators took their queues directly from Griffith. Klan uniforms became more or less standardized along the lines shown in the movie. The original Klan never burned a cross. But, it was done in the movie so the new KKK did it.
The new KKK was different from the original version in another critical way. The original KKK had been singlemindedly devoted to suppressing every possible instance of Black freedom, but uninterested in anything else. The new KKK continued the tradition of violent suppression of Black America but added attacks, both physical and rhetorical, on anyone who was not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. They attacked Catholics, Jews, Asians, and pretty much anyone who was not exactly like them. They were ferverently anti-immigrant. They insisted that they alone were "real Americans." The new Klan was much, much larger than the original. KKK membership peaked in 1925 at about 5,000,000. The total population of the country then was about 114 million. In some places such as Muncie, Indiana, about 40 percent of white men were Klan members.
Of course another difference... The original KKK was disbanded in 1872. The one founded in 1915, and its many offshoot organizations, is with us still.
Birth of a Nation resulted in a dramatic increase in racist attacks in the United States. Because the movie toured in specific places and was prohibited in others, we can actually have a pretty good idea of how inflammatory it was and how it directly resulted in the formation of hate groups and the deaths of African-Americans.
Desmond Ang has studied the relation between Birth of a Nation and the formation of "klaverns," new units of the KKK as well as the relationship between showings of the film and lynchings. Birth was shown in 606 counties in 1915, but there were many, many places where it wasn't shown, and it was entirely banned in Kansas. Ang shows that when a film was shown in a county, lynchings in that county rose an average of 500% the following month. Ang's work controlled for demographics, the number of historical lynchings, and voting patterns. He still found that places that showed the film more were more likely to have new KKK klaverns in the following years. Kansas, the only state to ban the film, saw no increase in KKK activity.
The effects of the film on Klan development were extremely persistent. Ang compared places that had similar demographics in 1915 when the film was first shown. He found that, in 2000, the chances that a county had an active KKK presence were 18% greater where the film was shown than where it wasn't.
Even further, in the first decades of the 21st century, white supremacist groups and hate crimes have continued to be more common in places where the film was shown than where it was not. Ang concludes that "...historical showings of The Birth of a Nation continue to predict the presence of white supremacist groups and the prevalence of anti-minority hate crimes in the 21st century" Ang's complete report is available on the web at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ang/files/ang_birthofanation_nov2020.pdf