In 1915, D. W. Griffith dropped a blockbuster on America - "Birth of a Nation." Considering the primitive, one-dimensional movies that had been released to that point, the film was an absolute masterpiece; some of the techniques Griffith invented for the film are still in use today. The film cost $110,000 to produce in 1915, with ticket prices of two bucks a head at the box office. It was more than three hours long, compared to the 15-minute shorts most people were used to.
Comparatively speaking, it was all three "Lord of the Rings" films at once with a ticket price of $20. It was the most vile, disgusting racist propaganda piece put together outside of Nazi Germany.
In the film, the "good" blacks were those who stayed on the plantations; the rest were out wandering around jobless, beating up white men and raping white women. The Northerners were happy they did this and encouraged it. The Southerners put together a team of masked Zorros to fight only for what was fair and right for the downtrodden Southern whites. They were called the Ku Klux Klan.
To this day, there are people who hold that this was a semi-historical representation of the acts of the Klan. Bunk.
The first Klan mentioned in the link above is the one that Griffith romanticized; it was made illegal by the federal government as a terrorist group. The rise of the second one mentioned could be directly attributed to the romantic picture Griffith painted of the lost institution.
Not unexpectedly, the black community was alarmed and disgusted by their portrayal in Griffith's film. The almost immediate renewal of violence towards blacks that accompanied the film made it clear that the message of "Birth of a Nation" had to be countered.
Emmett J. Scott, former secretary to Booker T. Washington, took it upon himself to get the opposing view onto celluloid. Raising more than half a million dollars - five times Griffith's budget - partially by selling stock in the venture, Scott envisioned "Birth of a Race." It would be an impassioned cry for tolerance and understanding, a film that would show that there was no difference between blacks and whites, and the suffering of one was the same as the suffering of the other...
Well, that was the idea, anyway.
What idealist Scott didn't realize was that the people who ponied up all that money wanted their money back, and they weren't all that hot on the box-office possibilities of noble black folks. As inevitably as any blockbuster made today, legions of share-owning idea men chimed in with their two cents, with nearly every one of them shying away from controversy that might cost them dollars in the box office. By the time "Birth of a Race" was finally released, the film was the equivalent of a three-hour school play about the history of the world, completely void of hard edges. It died a quick and inoffensive death, and of the three hours of original footage, only ten minutes remain today - usually seen only as a cheap add-on to the video release of the film that inspired it.
On the bright side for Scott, his idealism served him well. When WWI rolled around he was appointed special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of War in charge of Negro Affairs, making sure that the black men in the service got a fair shake. Afterwards, he held positions as secretary, treasurer and business manager at Howard University. He wrote "Scott's Official History of the American Negro in World War I," a reference still used today.
Which is very good and well, but Scott still blew the chance to rebut "Birth of a Nation." Fortunately, there were others who came after to take up the slack.
If "Birth of a Race" did not start - or empower - black cinema, it did mark the point at which black cinema was widely recognized as a necessary extension of the black American community. With no high-flown expectations of changing whites' attitudes or fighting the Hollywood machine, black cinema began to serve the black community in the same way Hollywood served the whites - by providing drama, comedy and entertainment to serve their respective audiences
Comparatively speaking, it was all three "Lord of the Rings" films at once with a ticket price of $20. It was the most vile, disgusting racist propaganda piece put together outside of Nazi Germany.
In the film, the "good" blacks were those who stayed on the plantations; the rest were out wandering around jobless, beating up white men and raping white women. The Northerners were happy they did this and encouraged it. The Southerners put together a team of masked Zorros to fight only for what was fair and right for the downtrodden Southern whites. They were called the Ku Klux Klan.
To this day, there are people who hold that this was a semi-historical representation of the acts of the Klan. Bunk.
The first Klan mentioned in the link above is the one that Griffith romanticized; it was made illegal by the federal government as a terrorist group. The rise of the second one mentioned could be directly attributed to the romantic picture Griffith painted of the lost institution.
Not unexpectedly, the black community was alarmed and disgusted by their portrayal in Griffith's film. The almost immediate renewal of violence towards blacks that accompanied the film made it clear that the message of "Birth of a Nation" had to be countered.
Emmett J. Scott, former secretary to Booker T. Washington, took it upon himself to get the opposing view onto celluloid. Raising more than half a million dollars - five times Griffith's budget - partially by selling stock in the venture, Scott envisioned "Birth of a Race." It would be an impassioned cry for tolerance and understanding, a film that would show that there was no difference between blacks and whites, and the suffering of one was the same as the suffering of the other...
Well, that was the idea, anyway.
What idealist Scott didn't realize was that the people who ponied up all that money wanted their money back, and they weren't all that hot on the box-office possibilities of noble black folks. As inevitably as any blockbuster made today, legions of share-owning idea men chimed in with their two cents, with nearly every one of them shying away from controversy that might cost them dollars in the box office. By the time "Birth of a Race" was finally released, the film was the equivalent of a three-hour school play about the history of the world, completely void of hard edges. It died a quick and inoffensive death, and of the three hours of original footage, only ten minutes remain today - usually seen only as a cheap add-on to the video release of the film that inspired it.
On the bright side for Scott, his idealism served him well. When WWI rolled around he was appointed special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of War in charge of Negro Affairs, making sure that the black men in the service got a fair shake. Afterwards, he held positions as secretary, treasurer and business manager at Howard University. He wrote "Scott's Official History of the American Negro in World War I," a reference still used today.
Which is very good and well, but Scott still blew the chance to rebut "Birth of a Nation." Fortunately, there were others who came after to take up the slack.
If "Birth of a Race" did not start - or empower - black cinema, it did mark the point at which black cinema was widely recognized as a necessary extension of the black American community. With no high-flown expectations of changing whites' attitudes or fighting the Hollywood machine, black cinema began to serve the black community in the same way Hollywood served the whites - by providing drama, comedy and entertainment to serve their respective audiences
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