Films >> Birth of a Nation (1915) >> FilmographySynopsisSourceScene LogKey PassagesReviewsHistoric ContextFilmic ContextScene AnalysisIssue EssayComparison FilmsSound BitesImage GalleryWorks Cited

Active U.S. Hate Groups (Southern Poverty Law Center) http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp

Allen, Michael. Family Secrets: The Feature Films of D.W. Griffith. London: BFI Pub., 1999.

American Lynching http://www.americanlynching.com/

Anderson, Lindsay. ”Birth of a Nation.” Sight and Sound 22.3 (1953): 129-30.

"Arrival of a New Stage in the Art of the Movies." Rev. of Birth of a Nation. Current Opinion April 1915: 251.

Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.

“Fighting a Vicious Filmâ€"Protest against The Birth of a Nation.” Pamphlet published by the Boston Branch of the NAACP, spring 1915.

Baldwin, James. The Devil Finds Work. London: Michael Joseph, 1976.

Barrett, Jenny. Shooting the Civil War: Cinema, History and American National Identity. New York: Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Belton, John. ”Birth of a Nation.” Sight and Sound 45.2 (1976): 85-86.

Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies . Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Bernardi, Daniel, ed. The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996.

Berquist, Goodwin, and James Greenwood. “Protest against Racism: The Birth of a Nation in Ohio.” Journal of the University Film Association 26.3 (1974): 39-44.

"The Birth of a Nation: An Editorial." The Crisis 10 (May-June 1915): 33. Silva 64-66.

Bloomfield, Maxwell. “Dixon’s The Leopard’s Spots: A Study in Popular Racism.” The Negro in the South since 1865: Selected Essays in American Negro History. Ed. Charles Wynes. Montgomery: U of Alabama P, 1965. 83-102.

Blumenthal, Henry. “Woodrow Wilson and the Race Question.” Journal of Negro History 48.1 (1963): 1-21.

Bogle, Donald. "The Brutal Black Buck and The Birth of a Nation." Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. 4th ed. Oxford: Roundhouse Press, 1994.

Bowers, Claude. The Tragic Era: The Revolution after Lincoln. Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.

Brodie, Fawn M. Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South. New York: W. W. Norton, 1959.

Brown, Karl. Adventures with D. W. Griffith. Ed. Kevin Brownlow. London: Secker and Warburg, 1973.

Bush, W. Stephen. Rev. of Birth of a Nation. Moving Picture World 13 March 1915: 1586-87. Silva 25-28. Lang 176-78.

Calhoun, William P. The Caucasian and the Negro in the United States. Columbia: Bryan Co., 1902.

"Capitalizing Race Hatred." New York Globe 6 April 1915. Silva 73-75. Lang 164-65.

Carroll, Charles. The Negro a Beast. St. Louis: American Book, 1900. http://www.biblical-truth.info/In%20the%20Image%20of%20God%20-%20by%20Charles%20Carroll.pdf

Carroll, Charles. The Tempter of Eve, Or The Criminality of Man's Social, Political, and Religious Equality with the Negro, and the Amalgamation to which these Crimes Inevitably Lead. St. Louis: Adamic Library, 1902.

Carter, Everett. "Cultural History Written with Lightning: The Significance of The Birth of a Nation." American Quarterly 12 (1960): 347-57. Silva 133-43.

"Censorship: The Curse of a Nation." Boston Evening Transcript 23 April 1915. Silva 87-88.

Chadwick, Bruce. The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film. New York: Vintage Books, 2002.

Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1968.

Chandler, James. “The Historical Novel Goes to Hollywood: Scott, Griffith, and Film Epic Today.” The Romantics and Us: Essays on Literature and Culture. Ed. Gene W. Ruoff. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. 237-73.

Cobleigh, Rolfe. "Why I Oppose The Birth of a Nation." Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest against The Birth of a Nation. Ed. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Boston: Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1915. Silva 80-83.

Combs, Richard. The Birth of a Nation.” Monthly Film Bulletin 46, no. 544 (May 1979): 105-106.

Cook, Raymond A. Fire from the Flint: The Amazing Careers of Thomas Dixon. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair, 1968.

Cook, Raymond A. Thomas Dixon. New York: Twayne, 1974.

Cook, Raymond A. “The Man behind The Birth of a Nation.” North Carolina Historical Review 29 (October 1962): 519-40.

Coulter, E. Merton.The South during Reconstruction 1865-1918 Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1947.

Courtney, Susan. Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race, 1903-1967. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.

Cripps, Thomas R. "The Reaction of the Negro to the Motion Picture, Birth of a Nation." Historian 26 (1963): 344-62. Silva 111-24.

Cripps, Thomas. Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.

Cripps, Thomas. “The Making of The Birth of Race: The Emerging Politics of Identity in Silent Movies.” The Birth of Whiteness. Ed. Daniel Bernardi. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996. 38-55.

Cuniberti, John. ”The Birth of a Nation”: A Formal Shot-by-Shot Analysis Together with Microfiche. Woodbridge: Research Publications, 1979.

D. W. Griffith and Walter Huston: Prelude to Birth of a Nation (1930) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghajmGg0BVg

Davenport, F. Gavin, Jr. “Thomas Dixon’s Mythology of Southern History.” Journal of Southern History 36.3 (1970): 350-67.

Davis, Angela. "Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist." Women, Race & Class. New York: Vintage, 1983. 173-269.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000.

Dirks, Tom. Birth of a Nation (1915). http://www.filmsite.org/birt.html

Dixon, Thomas, Jr. The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden. London: Doubleday, Page, 1902.

Dixon, Thomas, Jr. The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1905.

Dixon, Thomas. "Fair Play for The Birth of a Nation." Boston Journal 26 April 1915. Silva 90-95.

Dixon, Thomas. Reply to the New York Globe. New York Globe 10 April 1915. Silva 75-77. Lang 166-67.

"Dramatized Race Prejudice." The Independent 5 April 1915: 21.

Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. New York: Russell and Russell, 1935.

Dunning, William Archibald. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics. New York: Macmillan, 1897.

Dunning, William Archibald. Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907.

Everett, Anna. Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949. Durham: Duke UP, 2001.

Everson, William K. American Silent Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1978.

Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest against The Birth of a Nation. Ed. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Boston: Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1915.

"Fighting Race Calumny." The Crisis (May-June 1915): 40-42, 87-88. Silva 66-73.

Finch, Minnie. The NAACP: Its Fight for Justice. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1981.

Fleener-Marzec, Nickieann. D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation”: Controversy, Suppression, and the First Amendment as It Applies to Filmic Expression, 1915-1973. Durham: Duke UP, 2001.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Franklin, John Hope. Reconstruction: After the Civil War. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.

Franklin, John Hope. Birth of a Nation--Propaganda as History.” The Massachusetts Review 20 (1979): 417-33. Reprinted in Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988. Ed. John Hope Franklin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989. 10-24.

Gaines, Francis Pendleton. The Southern Plantation: A Study in the Development and the Accuracy of a Tradition. New York: Columbia UP, 1925.

Gaines, Jane. “The Birth of a Nation and Within Our Gates: Two Tales of the American South.” Dixie Debates: Perspectives on Southern Culture Ed. Richard H. King and Helen Taylor. London: Pluto Press, 1996. 177-92.

Gallagher, Brian. “Racist Ideology and Black Abnormality in The Birth of a Nation.” Phylon 43.1 (1982): 68-76.

Gallagher, Gary W. Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood & Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2008.

Gallagher, Gary W., and Alan T. Nolan. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000.

Geduld, Harry M., ed. Focus on D. W. Griffith. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

Gillespie, Michele K., and Randal L. Hall, eds. Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006.

Grazia, Edward de, and Roger K. Newman. Banned Films: Movies, Censors, and the First Amendment. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1982.

Green, J. Roland. “Micheaux v. Griffith.” Griffithiana 60-61 (1997): 32-49.

Greene, Ward. Rev. of Birth of a Nation. Atlanta Journal 7 December 1915. Silva 30-33. Lang 179-82.

Griffith, D. W. Reply to the New York Globe. New York Globe 10 April 1915. Silva 77-79. Lang 168-69.

Griffith, D. W. "Defense of the Birth of a Nation and Attack on the Sullivan Bill." Boston Journal 26 April 1915. Silva 88-90.

Griffith, D. W. "The Future of the Two-Dollar Movie." Silva 99-101.

Griffith, D. W. "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners." Silva 96-99.

Griffith, D. W. "The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America." Geduld 43-45.

Griffith, D. W. “The Birth of a Nation.”Sight and Sound 16.61 (1947): 32.

Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993.

Hackett, Francis. "Brotherly Love." New Republic 20 March 1915: 185. Silva 84-86. Lang 161-63.

Hammond, Michael. “'A Soul-stirring Appeal to Every Briton’: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation in Britain (1915-1916).” Film History 11.3 (1999): 353-70.

Hare, Harlow. Rev. of Birth of a Nation. Boston American 18 July, 1915. Silva 36-40. Lang 186-89.

Hate Watch (Southern Poverty Law Center) http://www.splcenter.org/center/petitions/standstrong/index.jsp

Henderson, Robert M. D.W. Griffith: His Life and Work. New York: Oxford UP, 1972.

hooks, bell. ”The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” Black American Cinema . Ed. Manthia Diawara. London: Routledge, 1993. 288-302.

Huff, Theodore. A Shot Analysis of D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.” New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961.

Hurwitz, Michael R. D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation”: The Film that Transformed America. North Charleston: BookSurge, 2006.

Inscoe, John. "The Clansman on Stage and Screen: North Carolina Reacts.” North Carolina Historical Review 64.2 (1987): 139-61.

Johnson, Rev. W. Bishop. The Birth of a Nation: A Monumental Slander of American History; the Negro and the Civil War. Washington, 1916.

Johnston, Ruth D. "The Construction of Whiteness in The Birth of a Nation and The Jazz Singer. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 28.5 (2011): 382-89.

Jozajtis, Kris. "American Civil Religion, The Lost Cause, and D. W. Griffith: The Birth of a Nation Revisited." Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies (December 2002).

Jozajtis, Kris. “’The Eyes of All People Are Upon Us’: American Civil Religion and the Birth of Hollywood.” Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Myth-making, Culture Making. Ed. S. Brent Plate. London: Palgrave/St. Martin’s, 2003. 239-61.

Jungquist, Hazel. “Viewing D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: A First Hand Account.” Ed. Robert K. Klepper. Classic Images no. 245 (November 1995): 36-37.

Kagan, Norman. “Two Classic War Films of the Silent Era: The Birth of a Nation and Shoulder Arms.” Film and History 4.3 (1974): 1-5, 18.

Kirby, Jack Temple. “D. W. Griffith’s Racial Portraiture.” Phylon 39.2 (1978): 118-27.

The Knights Party, USA (The Ku Klux Klan) http://www.kkk.bz/

Lang, Robert. American Film Melodrama: Griffith, Vidor, Minnelli. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.

Lang, Robert. The Birth of a Nation: D.W. Griffith, Director. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1994.

Lang, Robert. "The Birth of a Nation: History, Ideology, Narrative Form." The Birth of a Nation: D.W. Griffith, Director. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1994. 3-24.

Lennig, Arthur. "Myth and Fact: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation." Film History ; 16.2 (2004): 117-41.

Litwack, Leon F. "The Birth of a Nation." Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies. Ed. Marc C. Carnes. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. 136-41.

Lorence, James. "Cultural History through a Cloudy Lens: The Birth of a Nation (1915) and the Racial Climate of Progressive America." Screening America: United States History through Film since 1900. New York: Pearson, 2006.

Martin, Jeffrey B. "Film Out of Theatre: D. W. Griffith The Birth of a Nation and the Melodrama The Clansman.” Literature/Film Quarterly 18.2 (1990): 87-95.

McEwan, Paul. "Racist Film: Teaching The Birth of a Nation." Cinema Journal 47.1 (2007): 98-101.

McEwan, Paul. Lawyers, Bibliographies, and the Klan: Griffith’s Resources in the Censorship Battle over The Birth of a Nation in Ohio." Film History: An International Journal 20.3 (2008): 357-66.

McIntosh, Ned. Rev. of Birth of a Nation. Atlanta Constitution 7 December 1915. Silva 33-36. Lang 182-85.

Merritt, Russell. "Dixon, Griffith, and the Southern Legend." Cinema Journal 12.1 (1972): 26-45.

Merritt, Russell. "D.W. Griffith.” Film Reference. http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Fr-Ha/Griffith-D-W.html

Merritt, Russell. "D.W. Griffith.” Film Reference. http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Fr-Ha/Griffith-D-W.html

Miller, James A. “The Case of Early Black Cinema.” “Race and Cultural Production: Responses to The Birth of a Nation.” Ed. Linda Steiner. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10.2 (1993): 181-84.

Moore, John Hammond. “South Carolina’s Reaction to the Photoplay The Birth of a Nation.” Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association 33 (1963): 30-40.

Noble, Peter. "A Note on an Idol." Sight and Sound 15.59 (1946): 81-82.

Parkhurst, Dr. Charles H. "The Birth of a Nation." Silva 102-3.

Peterson, Merrill D. Lincoln in American Memory. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.

Pike, James S. The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government. New York: D. Appleton, 1874.

Pitcher, Conrad. "D. W. Griffith's Controversial Film, The Birth of a Nation." OAH Magazine of History Spring 1999: 50-55.

Regester, Charlene. "The Cinematic Representation of Race in The Birth of a Nation: A Black Horror Film." Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America. Ed. Michele K. Gillespie and Randal L. Hall. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006.

Rev. of Birth of a Nation. Moving Picture World 13 March 1915: 1587. Silva 28-29.

Robinson, Deric J. "In the Year 1915: D.W. Griffith and the Whitening of America." Social Identities 3.2 (1997): 161-92.

Rocchio, Vincent F. Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood’s Construction of Afro-American Culture. Boulder: Westview Press, 2000.

Rogin, Michael. "'The sword became a flashing vision': D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation." Ronald Reagan, The Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology. Berkeley: U of California P, 1987. Lang 250-93.

Rollins, Peter C. The Columbia Companion to American History on Film: How the Movies Have Portrayed the American Past. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.

Rylance, David. "Breech Birth: The Receptions to D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation." Australasian Journal of American Studies 24.2 (2005): 1-20.

Sachsman, David B. Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Cold Mountain. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2007.

Salter, Richard. "The Birth of a Nation as American Myth.” Journal of Religion and Film 8.2 (2004).

Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

Schickel, Richard. D. W. Griffith and the Birth of Film. London: Pavilion, 1984.

Schwartz, Barry. Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.

Shufeldt, Robert W. Negro: A Menace to American Civilization. Boston: Badger, Gorham Press, 1907. http://www.archive.org/stream/negromenacetoame00shuf#page/n3/mode/2up

Silva, Fred, ed. Focus on The Birth of a Nation. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

Silva, Fred. "Introduction." Focus on The Birth of a Nation. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971. 1-15.

Simcovitch, Maxim. “The Impact of Griffith’s Birth of a Nation on the Modern Ku Klux Klan.” Journal of Popular Film 1.1 (1972): 45-54.

Simmon, Scott. The Films of D. W. Griffith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.

Slide, Anthony, ed. Selected Film Criticism, 1912-1920. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1982.

Slide, Anthony. American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2004.

Smith, John D., and John C. Inscoe, eds. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: A Southern Historian and His Critics. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1993.

Sorlin, Pierre. “The American Civil War.” The Film in History: Restaging the Past. Totowa: Barnes and Noble, 1980. 83-115.

Staiger, Janet. "The Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering Its Reception." Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. Lang 195-213.

Steiner, Linda, ed. “Race and Cultural Production: Responses to The Birth of a Nation." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10.2 (1993): 179-97.

Steinle, John. "D.W. Griffith." Senses of Cinema. http://sensesofcinema.com/2006/great-directors/griffith/

Stern, Seymour. "Griffith Not Anti-Negro." Sight and Sound 16.61 (1947): 32-35.

Stokes, Melvyn. D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation: A History of "the most controversial motion picture of all time." New York: Oxford UP, 2007.

Stokes, Melvyn. “Race, Nationality and Citizenship: The Case of The Birth of a Nation." Federalism, Citizenship, and Collective Identities in U.S. History. Ed. Cornelis van Minnen and Sylvia L. Hilton. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2000. 107-19.

"The Birth of a Nation." Outlook 14 April 1915: 854.

Tourgee, Albion W. A Fool’s Errand by One of the Fools; Part II, The Invisible Empire, A Concise History of the Epoch on Which the Tale Is Base. New York: Fords, Howard and Hulbert, 1880.

Tourgee, Albion W. A Fool’s Errand. Ed. John Hope Franklin. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1961.

Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. London: Harper and Row, 1971.

Usai, Paulo Cherchi, ed. The Griffith Project: Vol. 8, Films Produced in 1914-15. London: British Film Institute/Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2004.

Vance, Mark. Rev. of Birth of a Nation. Variety 12 March 1915. Silva 22-25. Lang 173-75.

Wallace, Michele Faith. "The Good Lynching and The Birth of a Nation: Discourses and Aesthetics of Jim Crow." Cinema Journal 43.1 (2003): 85-104.

Weinberger, Stephen. "The Birth of a Nation and the Making of the NAACP." Journal of American Studies 45.1 (2011): 77-93.

White, Mimi. "The Birth of a Nation: History as Pretext." Enclitic 5.2/6, no. 1 (fall 1981/spring 1982): 17-24. Lang 214-24.

Williams, Linda. Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.

Wills, Brian Steel. Gone with the Glory: The Civil War in Cinema. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield: 2007.

Wilson, Woodrow. A History of the American People, Vol. V, Reunion and Nationalization. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1902.

Without Sanctuary. http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/