D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation & NAACP
- Artist/Author/Producer: D.W. Griffith
- Confronting Bodies: Citizens
- Dates of action: 1920
- Location: United States
- Description of the Art Work
- The silent film, Birth of a Nation. "The story fell into two parts:
The first is a conventional enough narrative of the Civil War; the second
is a view of postwar reconstruction as seen very much from a native
Southerner's point of view.The story forsook narrative for controversy
when it portrayed every black as animalistic, moronic and lusting after
women, while the overtly racist Ku Klux Klan appeared not only saviors of
the South but of the North as well." Jonathon Green, The Encyclopedia of
Censorship, Facts on File, pg. 21
- Description of incident
- The film "...was banned in more than a dozen localities ( and
furthermore has been the most banned film in American history) because of
its white supremacist sympathies, racist stereotypes, and glorification
of the Ku Klux Klan..." Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy, Marjorie Heins, pg. 40
- Results of incident
- The NAACP continues to fight against it.
Source: Sex, Sin and Blasphemy, Marjorie Heins, New Press,'93, NYC