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After seeing the film, an enthusiastic Wilson reportedly remarked: "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." African-American audiences openly wept at the film's malicious portrayal of blacks, while Northern white audiences cheered. The film swept the nation. Riots broke out in major cities (Boston and Philadelphia, among others), and it was denied release in many other places (Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis). Gangs of whites roamed city streets attacking blacks. In Lafayette, Indiana, a white man killed a black teenager after seeing the movie. Thomas Dixon reveled in its triumph. "The real purpose of my film," he confessed gleefully, "was to revolutionize Northern audiences that would transform every man into a Southern partisan for life."



As the NAACP fought against the film and tried unsuccessfully to get it banned, the Ku Klux Klan successfully used it to launch a massive recruiting campaign that would bring in millions of members. Griffith later regretted the racial prejudice that his film promoted. He tried to make amends by making INTOLERANCE, a film attacking race prejudice. But INTOLERANCE never approached the success of THE BIRTH OF A NATION.



-- Richard Wormser

Choose another event The Emancipation Proclamation Freedmen's Bureau Ku Klux Klan Reconstruction Fourteenth Amendment Ratified Enforcement Acts Civil Rights Act of 1875 Hayes-Tilden Election Tuskegee Institute Founded Civil Rights Act Overturned Ida B. Wells Flees Memphis Atlanta Compromise Speech Plessy v. Ferguson Spanish American War Williams v. Mississippi The Wilmington Riot The Birth of the Blues The Great Migration The Souls of Black Folk Niagara Movement Atlanta Riot Brownsville Affair NAACP The Crisis U.S. Government Segregation The Birth of a Nation U.S. in World War I Red Summer Harlem Renaissance Tulsa Riot Moore v. Dempsey Fisk Protest The Great Depression Scottsboro Case Gaines v. Canada Proposed March on Washington U. S. in World War II Smith v. Allright Morgan v. Virginia Jackie Robinson Integrates Baseball Truman Supports Civil Rights Brown v. Board of Education



In 1995, Turner Classic Movies cancelled a broadcast of a restored print because of racial tensions spurred by the O.J. Simpson trial. Ku Klux Klan



Reconstruction



NAACP



