Birth of a Nation

Birth of a Nation

The film Birth of a Nation was directed by D. W. Griffith, written by Thomas F. Dixon Jr. and music produced by Joseph Carl Breil. It is a docu-drama and was released in 1915 and has been shown to have secured the future of feature length films. The film premiered on February 8, 1915 in Riverside, California.

The film was shown in two parts. Part one shows pre-Civil War America introducing two families. The Northern Stonemans, consisting of abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman, his two sons, and his daughter, Elsie, and the Southern Camerons, a family including two daughters, Margaret and Flora, and three sons, most mentioned one was Ben Camron.

The eldest Stoneman boy falls in love with Margaret Cameron, and Ben Cameron is in love with Elsie Stoneman. When the war begins, all of the boys join certain armies. A Black militia attacks the Cameron house, almost trapping all the Cameron women, who are rescued when Confederate soldiers find the Black militia. The youngest Stoneman and two Cameron boys are killed in the war. Ben Cameron is wounded and taken to a Northern hospital where he meets Elsie, a nurse. The war ends and Abraham Lincoln is assassinated, allowing Austin Stoneman and other radical congressmen to punish the South for secession with Reconstruction.

Part two begins with Stoneman and his sidekick, Silas Lynch, going to South Carolina to observe their plan to empower Southern blacks with election fraud. Ben Cameron, inspired by children pretending to be ghosts, devises a plan to regain the power of Southern whites by forming the Ku Klux Klan, which angers Elsie.

Gus, a former slave, proposes to marry Flora Cameron. She runs into the forest, chased by Gus. Flora chooses death over letting herself be touched by a black man. In response the Klan hunts Gus, lynches him, and leaves his corpse on Lieutenant Governor Silas Lynch's doorstep. In retaliation, Lynch orders a stop to the Klan. Victorious, the Klansmen celebrate in the streets, then the film cuts to the next election where the Klan successfully disenfranchises black voters. The film finishes off with a double honeymoon of Phil Stoneman and Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman.

The topic stated in the film was that Reconstruction was a disaster, that African Americans could never be integrated into white society as equals, and that the actions of the Ku Klux Klan