Civil Rights Movement and The Clansman
"The film is many things: repulsive, naive, biased, simplistic, historically inaccurate and astonishing in its view of history and racist glorification of the KKK. Yet it tremendously significant and powerful work of art with extraordinary effect and brilliantly-filmed sequences" (Dirks). The movie was based on one man's simple but yet repulsive story. The flaw in past American actions that can well be seen is in a group of white men named the Klu Klux Klan, who were re-influenced into their hateful rage by one man's Romantic novel, called The Clansman.The book, The Clansman-An Historical Romance of the Klu Klux Klan, was written by Thomas Dixon Jr. Growing up during the reconstruction era, he was imbued with the folk image of the Klan as the savior of the south (Kinney). When he grew up he wrote 22 novels and plays about social defects, but before that he was a southern minister. He befriended 3 presidents, including Woodrow Wilson (Cook) who he attended John Hopkins University with. As a student reading Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, he suffered a brief period of religious doubt. But he rebounded stronger and went on to lecture on denying blacks of political equality an
A collation of men gathered on a granite cliff in Atlanta, where they hung an American Flag and erected a crude cross and set it on fire while they swore allegiance to the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Klu Klux Klan (Cook). Perhaps the main reason he wrote the book was to express his ideas on what he felt would happen in real life. The women themselves resemble the image of pure southern womanhood, two beautiful girls who constantly remain at home. d denying women of working out of the house (Kinney) All though, his work is mainly shunned, Dixon clearly foreshadowed the politicized television evangelists of the modern south. The novel is a twisted love story consisting of two women, one of which throws herself over a cliff to save her virtue, and the other is locked in a cabin, where the Clansman must ride to in order to save her, from her assailant (Cook). The modern Klu Klux Klan was soon reborn and along with the collection of men the movie was replayed time and time again for showings in the South. In many occasions viewers were so riled up by the story line they would shout and cheer and in one occasion men pulled out the guns and shoot up the screen in order to save the heroine from her rapist (Cook). For example, the idea of the black man in the novel is a wild ferocious man with rape on his mind. Through the success of the book, Dixon created a play that then toured the nation. Ignorance in the case of prejudice fool is contagious and as long as it feed the human race, either through novels, plays or simply patio talk, racism will always be around. The movie ends with its final subtitle: "Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever!" Which makes you wonder, does The Birth of a Nation refer to the re-established 'united' states, or to the "birth" of the Invisible Empire-The Klu Klux Klan?. Dixon himself took a leading role and the news of the play soon caught the attention of David Griffith. The book its self is a vivid portrayal of the aspects of the reconstruction. Meantime, the white man is the hero of the story and civilized. With these two characters there needed to be a hero and so knowing from his own standards that the clan was the savior of the south and perhaps the nation, he used the clansman to serve as the hero in the novel, the super most being in the whole story.
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Acceptance Essays
