Home / Full timeline / The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) led the Black outcry against the showing of D. W. Griffith’s controversial film, Birth of a Nation, which the NAACP claimed, told a distorted story of emancipation, reconstruction, Black immorality, and glorified anti-Black organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) led the Black outcry against the showing of D. W. Griffith’s controversial film, Birth of a Nation, which the NAACP claimed, told a distorted story of emancipation, reconstruction, Black immorality, and glorified anti-Black organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.
1915 (Nov 14)
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) led the Black outcry against the showing of D. W. Griffith's controversial film, Birth of a Nation. The film, based on the writings of Thomas Dixon, was the most technologically advanced motion picture produced at that time. The NAACP claimed that the film told a distorted story of emancipation, reconstruction, and Black immorality, and glorified anti-Black organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. The film portrayed Black Americans as either docile servants or insolent monsters and sympathized with its Southern white protagonists. The film sparked the first national Black social protest that combined legislative lobbying in the Massachusetts state House, picketing in Boston streets, and protests. The movement was later joined by several Black West Coast businessmen who financed all-Black movies to counter racist, mainstream cinema.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.