The Birth of a Nation Debate: The Talking Points
By the Literature Seminar for Freshmen, Lehigh University, October 2010
Teacher's note: What specific points did such critics of Birth of a Nation as the New York Globe, Rolfe Cobleigh, and Francis Hackett use to attack the film? And what specific points did D. W. Griffith, Thomas Dixon, and such supporters as Charles Parkhurst use to defend it? Our class provides an annotated list of the issues and arguments advanced by both sides in the debate. This section differs from the previous one by focusing on the facts, the content, rather than the strategies. Users can glance down the page and quickly grasp the "talking points" as well as seeing them embodied in the actual words of the combatants. (Prof. Edward J. Gallagher)
The Birth of a Nation falsifies history
"I have expressed my disapproval of The Birth of a Nation, following each view of it on the grounds of falsifying history, in a riot of emotions glorifying crime, especially lynching, immorality, inviting prejudice against the Negro race, falsely representing the character of colored Americans, and teaching the undemocratic, unchristian, and unlawful doctrine that all colored people should be removed from the United States." (Cobleigh: "Why I Oppose The Birth of a Nation")
The Birth of a Nation depicts the Ku Klux Klan positively
"We see the operations of the Ku Klux Klan, 'the organization that saved the south from the anarchy of black rule.' My objection to this drama is based partly on the tendency of the pictures but mainly on the animus of the printed lines I have quoted. The effect of these lines, reinforced by adroit quotations from Woodrow Wilson and repeated assurances of impartiality and good will, is to arouse in the audience a strong sense of the evil possibilities of the Negro and the extreme propriety and godliness of the Ku Klux Klan. So strong is this impression that the audience invariably applauds the refusal of the white hero to shake hands with a Negro." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
The Birth of a Nation depicts the "white south" as victims
"Mr. Dixon shows the revolting processes by which the white south is crushed 'under the heel of the black south.' On the one hand we have 'the poor bruised heart' of the white south, on the other 'the new citizens inflamed by the growing sense of power'." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
Even Southerners should be insulted by the inaccurate history
"Let us rejoice in that the Stonemans of Washington were magnanimous, but let us not dishonor ourselves by calling into question their great merit by presenting them as paramours of quadroon mistresses, moved by petty spite. It is insulting to every man of Southern birth to assume that he is pleased by misrepresentation so colossal." ("Capitalizing Race Hatred")
The Birth of a Nation is racist
"Bad things occurred, but what man will say that the outrages of black on white equaled in number the outrages of white on black?" ("Capitalizing Race Hatred")
"They [the Negroes] had protected the women and children on the plantations while the struggle went on which was to decide whether they were to become men or to remain as chattels, and the great body of them continued to exhibit, under the most trying circumstances, docility and kindness." ("Capitalizing Race Hatred")
"We see Negroes shoving white men off the sidewalk, Negroes quitting work to dance, Negroes beating a crippled old white patriarch. Negroes slinging up 'faithful colored servants' and flogging them till they drop. . . . We see the black leader demanding a 'forced marriage' with an imprisoned and gagged white girl. And we see continually in the background the white Southerner in 'agony of soul over the degradation and ruin of his people'. " (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
"[There is a] strong sense of the evil possibilities of the Negro and the extreme propriety and godliness of the Ku Klux Klan. So strong is this impression that the audience invariably applauds the refusal of the white hero to shake hands with a Negro." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
"[Griffith] recklessly distorts Negro crimes, gives them a disproportionate place in life, and colors them dishonestly to inflame the ignorant and incredulous. . . . his perversions are cunningly calculated to flatter the white man and provoke hatred and contempt for the Negroes." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
The Birth of a Nation promotes violence against Negroes
"I have expressed my disapproval of The Birth of a Nation, following each view of it on the grounds of falsifying history, in a riot of emotions glorifying crime, especially lynching, immorality, inviting prejudice against the Negro race, falsely representing the character of colored Americans, and teaching the undemocratic, unchristian, and unlawful doctrine that all colored people should be removed from the United States." (Cobleigh: "Why I Oppose The Birth of a Nation")
The film degrades Negroes, especially in relation to white women
"To present the members of the race as women-chasers and foul fiends is a cruel distortion of history." ("Capitalizing Race Hatred")
"[Dixon] emphasized the alleged dominant passion of colored men to have sexual relations with white women and said that one purpose in his play was to create a feeling of abhorrence in white people, especially white women against colored men." (Cobleigh: "Why I Oppose The Birth of a Nation")
The film slanders Negroes and misrepresents their economic and political position
"White men in this country have never been just to black men. . . . We do not, in any state of the Union, grant to the Negro economic and political economy. . . . The wonder is that the Negro is good as he is. Then to the injury is added slander." ("Capitalizing Race Hatred")
Dixon's mind is ruled by prejudice
"So far as I can judge from this film, as well as from my recollection of Mr. Dixon's books, his is the sort of disposition that foments a great deal of the trouble in civilization." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
"At a remote period of his existence it is possible that he possessed a rudimentary faculty of self-analysis. But before that faculty developed he crystallized in his prejudices, and forever it was stunted. Since that time, whenever he has been stimulated by any of the ordinary emotions, by religion or by patriotism or by sex, he has responded with a frantic intensity." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
Dixon is a yellow journalist
"He is yellow because he distorts them [crimes of violence]. . . . .He is yellow because he recklessly distorts Negro crimes, gives them a disproportionate place in life, and colors them dishonestly to inflame the ignorant and incredulous. And he is especially yellow, and quite disgustingly and contemptibly yellow, because his perversions are cunningly calculated to flatter the white man and provoke hatred and contempt for the Negroes." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
The Birth of a Nation makes evil look like good
"If one of his heroes is about to do something peculiarly loathsome, Mr. Dixon thrusts a crucifix in his hand and has him roll his eyes to heaven. In this way the very basest impulses are given the sanction of godliness, and Mr. Dixon preserves his own respect and the respect of such people as go by the label and not by the rot-gut they consume." (Hackett, "Brotherly Love")
The title insults Lincoln and the Founders' attempts to unify the new country
The very name of The Birth of a Nation is an insult to Washington, who believed that a nation, not merely a congeries of independent states, was born during the common struggles of the Revolutionary War, and devoted himself to cementing the union. It is an insult to Lincoln and the great motives inspiring him when he was called on to resist the attempt to denationalize a nation. ("Capitalizing Race Hatred")
"This nation of ours was not born between 1861 and 1865, and no one will profit from trying to pervert history." ("Capitalizing Race Hatred")
Even the makers of the film admit that it went too far
"Mr. Dixon admitted that some of the scenes as originally presented in New York were too strongly suggested of immorality and that he told Mr. Griffth they went too far." (Cobleigh: "Why I Oppose The Birth of a Nation")
Censorship is unconstitutional
"Every American citizen has a constitutional right to publish anything he pleases, either by speech, or in writing, or in print, or in pictures, subject to his liability after publication to the penalties of violating any law, such as the law forbidding obscenity, libel, and other matter legally unfit for publication." (Griffith, "The Rise and Fall . . .")
"[Censorship legislation] is the violation of every principle freedom and democracy for which the grand old Commonwealth has stood for 200 years." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
"The same reasons which make a censorship of the printed press unconstitutional and intolerable to Americans, make a censorship of the pictorial press unconstitutional and intolerable." (Griffith, "The Rise and Fall . . .")
"We have no wish to offend with indecencies or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue." (Griffith, "The Rise and Fall . . .")
"I modestly suggest to Moorfield Storey [head of the NAACP] that this is a free country and that only a negro or his color-blind associate could be child enough to ask such protection from historical discussion." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
Censorship inhibits the growth of art
"Today the censorship of moving pictures, throughout the entire country, is seriously hampering the growth of art. . . . The right of free speech has cost centuries upon centuries of untold sufferings and agonies; it has cost rivers of blood. It has taken as its toll uncounted fields littered with the carcasses of human beingsâ€"all this that there might come to live and survive that wonderful thing, the power of free speech." (Griffith, "The Rise and Fall . . .")
Censorship is a slippery slope
"The witch burners, who burn through the censorship of the motion of picture today, when they have nothing left but the charred and blackened embers of that which promised once to be a beautiful art, when this grisly work is finished, where will they turn their attention next?" (Griffith, "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners")
"History is a story of conflict. You could not even portray the drama of the days of '49 to '70 in the golden west. . . . [Censors] people revel in objections. There could be no story of the American Revolution. . . . Those of English descent in our country would protest, and so on down the line with all nationalities and all grades of people. It would be impossible to present anything." (Griffith, "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners")
Dramatic art is impossible without a degree of religious or racial feeling
"How unwise to drag race or religion into the realm of censorship! It is unwritten law that neither of these matters belong to legislative regulation, but are reserved within the clause of the Constitution that grants freedom of speech. If the Sullivan bill be enacted, the civic authorities and the courts will find themselves in very deep waters. They will be censoring racial and religious matters that do not possibly concern them." (Griffith, "Defense of . . . and Attack on the Sullivan Bill")
The Sullivan Bill is too general and will affect the arts as a whole, not just this one film
"The truth is hardly anyone seems to have considered seriously the far- reaching consequences of this rash project. The clause, 'tending to a breach of the public peace' opens up the way for any disgruntled or venomous adversaries to start a disturbance in a theater lobby and thereby get a play suppressed. The real purpose of the bill is to destroy one film play, 'The Birth of a Nation'. " (Griffith, "Defense of . . . and Attack on the Sullivan Bill")
The Sullivan Bill is a rush job aimed at this one film
"The Sullivan Bill is astounding! Actually an effort is being made to rush through the general court, under suspension of the rule, House Bill No. 2,077 which would make it a criminal offence to produce 'any show or entertainment which tends to excite racial or religious prejudice, or tends to a breach of the public peace.' Not only have the rules been suspended to jam it through, but the second section provides that, immediately and without further notice to any property rights involved, 'this act shall take effect upon its passage'." (Griffith, "Defense of . . . and Attack on the Sullivan Bill")
Censoring this movie would make a mockery of the law and the law-makers
"Special class legislation should not be allowed for one instant in the free state of Massachusetts. The senators and representatives should not make themselves the laughing stock of the country by enacting such a travesty of law and justice." (Griffith, "Defense of . . . and Attack on the Sullivan Bill")
Even Negroes should be against censorship
"I modestly suggest to Moorfield Storey [head of the NAACP] that this is a free country and that only a negro or his color-blind associate could be child enough to ask such protection from historical discussion." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
Those who favor censorship, favor racial intermarriage
"[The film] tends to prevent the lowering of the standard of our citizenship by its mixture with Negro blood." (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
"The attack of the organized opponents to this picture is centered upon the feature of it which they deem might become an influence against the intermarriage of blacks and whites. . . . May I inquire if you desire to espouse the cause of a society [the NAACP] which openly boasts in its official organ, The Crisis, that it has been able to throttle 'anti-intermarriage legislation'?" (Griffith's "Reply to the New York Globe")
The Birth of a Nation is historically accurate
"In my work on the history of Reconstruction I have mastered the contents of more than 4,000 volumes forming the sources of the history of that period." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
"This play was not written to stir race hatred. It is the faithful record of the life of fifty years ago. It is no reflection on the cultured, decent Negro of today. In it are sketched good Negroes and bad Negroes, good whites and bad whites." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
"A boy can learn more true history and get more of the atmosphere of the period by sitting down for three hours before the film which Mr. Griffith has produced with such artistic skill than by weeks and months of study in the classroom." (Parkhurst, "The Birth of a Nation")
"The treatment of the Negroes during the days of Reconstruction is shown effectually and graphically in our picture. We show many phases of the question and we do pay particular attention to those faithful Negroes who stayed with their former masters and were ready to give up their lives to protect their white friends." (Griffith's "Reply to the New York Globe")
The Birth of a Nation is well researched
"In my work on the history of Reconstruction I have mastered the contents of more than 4,000 volumes forming the sources of the history of that period." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
The Birth of a Nation accurately depicts the sentiments of white southerners
"[Birth of a Nation] expresses the passionate faith of the entire white population in the south. If I am wrong, they are wrong. The number of white people in the south who differ from my views of the history of Reconstruction could be housed on a half-acre lot." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
The Birth of a Nation has educational value
"A boy can learn more true history and get more of the atmosphere of the period by sitting down for three hours before the film which Mr. Griffith has produced with such artistic skill than by weeks and months of study in the classroom." (Parkhurst, "The Birth of a Nation")
"It teaches our boys the history of our nation in a way that makes them know the priceless inheritance our fathers gave us through the sacrifice of the civil war and reconstruction." (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
The Birth of a Nation affirms Lincoln's beneficent plan for Reconstruction
"Thaddeus Stevens tried to remove Johnson from the office of president and set up a dictatorship on the ruins of the republic because the president stood firmly by Abraham Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction and refused to place the South under the rule of a million ignorant negroes who had just emerged from slavery." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
"Abraham Lincoln was magnanimous, and his mighty spirit brooded over the Capitol after his death pleading for generous treatment of the South. The magnanimity extended was in spite of Stevens and his associates, not through them." (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
"It reaffirms Lincoln's solution of the Negro problem as a possible guide to our future and glorifies his character as the noblest example of American democracy." (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
The Birth of a Nation affirms Daniel Webster's role too
"It gives Daniel Webster for the first time his true place in American history as the inspiring creator of the modern nation we know today." (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
The Birth of a Nation is not racist
"This play was not written to stir race hatred. It is the faithful record of the life of fifty years ago. It is no reflection on the cultured, decent Negro of today. In it are sketched good Negroes and bad Negroes, good whites and bad whites." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
"The criticism that it exhibits the negro in a unfortunate light and that it is calculated to engender racial animosity is fully met by the consideration that it represents the negro, not as he is now at all, but as he was in the days when he had just had the chains broken from him and when he was rioting in the deliciousness of a liberty so new and untried that he had not yet learned to understand it a was as ignorant as a baby of the way to use it." (Parkhurst, "The Birth of a Nation")
"It is . . . exactly true to history, and if it reflects upon the negro as he was then it is a compliment to the black man of today." (Parkhurst, "The Birth of a Nation")
"No characters in the story are applauded with greater fervor than the good Negroes whose devotion is so clearly shown. If prejudiced witnesses do not see the message in this portion of the entire drama we are not to blame." (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
"The treatment of the Negroes during the days of Reconstruction is shown effectually and graphically in our picture. We show many phases of the question and we do pay particular attention to those faithful Negroes who stayed with their former masters and were ready to give up their lives to protect their white friends." (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
"No characters in the story are applauded with greater fervor than the good Negroes whose devotion is so clearly shown." (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
The Birth of a Nation does not malign the current generation of Negroes
"This play was not written to stir race hatred. It is the faithful record of the life of fifty years ago. It is no reflection on the cultured, decent Negro of today. In it are sketched good Negroes and bad Negroes, good whites and bad whites." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
"The criticism that it exhibits the negro in a unfortunate light and that it is calculated to engender racial animosity is fully met by the consideration that it represents the negro, not as he is now at all, but as he was in the days when he had just had the chains broken from him and when he was rioting in the deliciousness of a liberty so new and untried that he had not yet learned to understand it a was as ignorant as a baby of the way to use it." (Parkhurst, "The Birth of a Nation")
"It is . . . exactly true to history, and if it reflects upon the negro as he was then it is a compliment to the black man of today." (Parkhurst, "The Birth of a Nation")
"Our story states, as plainly as the English language can express a fact, the reasons for this presentation. In our captions we reiterate that the events depicted upon the screen are not meant as a reflection upon any race or people of today." (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
"I am not attacking the Negro of today. I am recording faithfully the history of fifty years ago. I portray three Negroes faithful unto death to every want and two vicious Negroes, misled by white scoundrels. Is it a crime to present a bad black man, seeing we have so many bad white ones?" (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
The character "Gus" was real and not an exaggeration
"It was this crime which took my father, the Rev. Thomas Dixon, from the pulpit into the ranks of the Klan. It was this crime which led my brother, the Rev. A. C. Dixon, D.D., the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle of London, former pastor of the Ruggles Street Baptist Church of Boston, to join the Klan and ride one of those white-robed horses you see in our play." (Dixon, "Fair Play for . . .")
The motion picture is war's greatest antidote
"As tolerance would thus be compelled to give way before knowledge and as the deadly monotony of the cheerless existence of millions would be brightened by this new art, two of the chief causes making war possible would be removed." (Griffith, "The Rise and Fall . . .")
The violence in The Birth of a Nation delivers a powerful anti-war message
"It is only one thing to read about the trenches, the killing and the corpses. It is quite another thing to have them bodily pressed before the eye. . . . On Griffith's screen we see the real thing. It conveys an indelible lesson to all who have been bewitched by those who have decked out the naked hideousness of war with tinsel drapery." (Parkhurst, "The Birth of a Nation")
"It shows the horror and futility of war as a method of settling civic principles." (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
The motion picture is a new form in the evolution of art
Evolution. . . . yet the time it would take a modern prototype of Shakespeare to write a history, say, for instance, of the tragedy of the civil war in our own country, would take you days to read, would take a series of plays running a week to perform. Man ever groping for expression discovered a new form--the motion picture." (Griffith, "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners")
"It is said the motion picture tells its story more vividly than any other art. In other words, we are to be blamed for efficiency, for completeness. Is this justice? Is this common sense?" (Griffith, "The Rise and Fall . . .")
Movies bring the masses much needed escape
"It is softening the hard life of the plain citizen with beauty and sweetness: it keeps men away from saloons and drink, because it gives them a place of recreation in pleasant surroundings: it brings to the poor who are unable to travel away from their own dingy surroundings the beauty and poetry of moving foreign scenes, of flowers, waving grasses, the beauty of uplifted mountain crests, and the wonders of nature." (Griffith, "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners")
Motion pictures are the laboring man's university
"The truths of history today are restricted to the limited few attending our colleges and universities; the motion picture can carry these truths to the entire world, without cost, while at the same time bringing diversion to the masses." (Griffith, "The Rise and Fall . . .")
But every era has its villains, victims, and scapegoats: now it's film
"The motion picture is at present the witch of modern times, and at all times there must be witches to be burned." (Griffith, "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners")
"The printing press was called 'an instrument of the devil' by the ignorant masses of that day." (Griffith, "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners")
In The Birth of a Nation good triumphs over evil
"We have contrasted the bad with the good and following the formula of the best dramas of the world we establish our ideals by revealing the victory of right over wrong." (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
The Birth of a Nation was not produced for "sordid reasons"
"Without wishing to tell any newspaper its business, permit me to suggest that a cub reporter in one hour could find out that this attack is an organized effort to suppress a production which was brought forth to reveal the beautiful possibilities of the art of motion pictures and to tell a story which is based upon truth in every vital detail." (Griffith's "Reply to the New York Globe")
Respected members of society praise the film
"According to men of the standing of Metcalf, the cynical critic of Life, including besides such people as the Rev. Thomas Gregory, Dorothy Dix, Burns Mantle, Louis Defoe . . . enthusiastically indorse the motion picture play Birth of a Nation." (Griffith, "The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners")
"In every walk of life there are men and women of this city who have expressed their appreciation of this picture. Do you dare to intimate that these voluntary expressions of approval were voiced 'for purely sordid reasons'?" (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
"Your editorial is an insult to the intelligence and the human kindness of nearly 100,000 of the best people in New York City, who have viewed this picture from artistic interests and not through any depraved taste such as you try to indicate." (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
"We have received letters of the heartiest commendation from statesmen, writers, clergymen, artists, educators, and laymen." (Griffith, "Reply to the New York Globe")
A jury of three representative New York clergymen approved the film
"They declare in substance that the play in its final impression on the audience does six things: (1) It reunites common sympathy and love in all sections of our country. (2) It teaches our boys the history of our nation in a way that makes them know the priceless inheritance our fathers gave us through the sacrifice of war and reconstruction. (3) It tends to prevent the lowering of the standard of our citizenship by its mixture with Negro blood. (4) It shows the horror and futility of war as a method of settling civic principles. (5) It reaffirms Lincoln's solution of the Negro problem as a possible guide to our future and glorifies his character as the noblest example of American democracy. (6) It gives to Daniel Webster for the first time his true place in American history as the inspiring creator of the modern nation we know today." (Dixon's "Reply to the New York Globe")
