Birth of a Nation was the first feature film produced in Hollywood. It remains as divisive as it did when it came out in 1915. D. W. Griffith push the art of cinema into the 20th century by pioneering new editing and camera techniques, however the film’s values are those of racial bigotry, where black people are lazy and criminal, and the KKK are heroes
The First Resurgence
American Experience PBS
"Klansville U.S.A." premiered January 13, 2015 at 9/8c on PBS American Experience. 1915 premiere of D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation," there was a resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan in America. By the mid-1920s, nearly 4 million Americans claimed Klan membership, making them a powerful political force.
For information on how to watch the full documentary film, "Klansville U.S.A." please visit: https://tinyurl.com/yakea38v
American Academy in Berlin
The American Ku Klux Klan is familiar to many: after the Civil War, it formed in the southern states as a masked terrorist group devoted to maintaining white supremacy and ensuring cheap sharecropper labor. But few know about the “second KKK,” which attracted three to six million members in the 1920s in the northern states. It became a mass organization by expanding its enemies list to include Catholics and Jews. It claimed that America was “destined” to be a white Protestant nation, and that God had created the Klan in order to stop Catholic and Jewish conspiracies to seize power. This second Klan was mainly nonviolent, was not secret, and pursued a highly successful electoral and legislative strategy. In this talk, historian Linda Gordon argues that the second Klan’s white nationalist ideology and strategy continue to influence US politics and can help to illuminate the recent rise of “populist” and fascistic movements around the globe.
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