The Civil War put an end to the immoral and corrupt practice of slavery upon which white enslavers built their wealth and power. The liberation didn’t really sit well with those who had profited from Black suffering for generations. Up to that point, slaves generated immense profits, and the profiteers really wanted to keep things as they were, often resorting to gruesome acts to keep the money rolling. Not-so-sadly for them, the free-labor system they worked so hard to maintain and protect has crumbled away.
White Southerners, unwilling to accept defeat, quickly moved to reassert control through Black Codes, sharecropping, and racial terror. The infamous Ku Klux Klan quickly emerged as a weapon of white supremacy that fueled the aforementioned terror through violence against members of newly freed Black communities. The Klan ran rampant for six years before federal law enforcement began taking action in 1871, leading to its official disbandment in 1872. That is, until 1915’s Birth of a Nation hit the theaters.
Released in 1915, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation remains among the most infamous movies in cinematic history due to its racist and revisionist narrative, which is an outright celebration of white supremacy. The movie completely ignores historical facts to fit the “Lost Cause” myth by portraying the Reconstruction era as a time of Black incompetence and corruption while also completely ignoring and erasing the brutalities of slavery and the systemic oppression it brought.
Furthermore, not only did it depict Black people (white actors in blackface) as ignorant, violent, and sexually aggressive towards white women, but it also portrayed the original KKK as heroic saviors of the South who rode to restore “order” after Reconstruction. The portrayal of the former was problematic in itself because it fueled real-world violence against Black communities, but the latter practically erased the Klan’s actual history filled with racial terror, lynchings, and voter suppression and made them heroes.
Sad to say, but the movie was an instant blockbuster, and it was really hard to argue against its distortion of historical facts when the history books of the time and the entire system supported its racist narrative. Academic histories of the time mostly centered around William Archibald Dunning‘s school of thought, which considered Reconstruction to be a terrible mistake, and this helped justify the film’s portrayal of Black people as uncultured, intellectually inferior, and sexually predatory while depicting the original KKK as the saviors of the South.
Sometime around the film’s theatrical release, Thomas Dixon Jr., the writer of The Clansman — the book which Birth of a Nation was adapted from — convinced his close friend, President Woodrow Wilson, to organize a private showing at the White House. The screening of the film in the White House was perceived as a political endorsement by some, and William Joseph Simmons, a white supremacist from Georgia, rode the film’s popularity train to bolster the Klan’s appeal for a resurgence.
Simmons is considered the founder of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan, now referred to as the modern or second KKK. After learning that the movie would be screened again on December 6, 1915, in Atlanta, Simmons and a select few came together on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1915. They climbed Stone Mountain outside Atlanta, where they burned a large cross — something that was seen from within the city. Of course, the word about the burning cross spread throughout Atlanta.
However, the burning of the cross wasn’t the only thing Simmons had done to mark the rebirth of the KKK. He also took out an ad about the Klan’s revival and had it run alongside the announcement for Birth of a Nation premiere in a local newspaper. So, on the film’s opening night, Simmons and other Klansmen, dressed in now recognizable white sheets, paraded around the city on hooded horses and fired rifle salutes in front of the movie theaters. They also handed out KKK literature to those who came to watch Birth of a Nation.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, established a few years prior, protested the screenings and the accompanying KKK events, but to no avail, as the film’s popularity was too strong. Truth be told, Simmons initially had little success in recruiting members or in raising money, and the second Klan remained a rather small organization in the Atlanta area. However, by the mid-1920s, the Klan membership was estimated at around five to six million members.
Unlike the original Klan, whose core beliefs were centered around anti-Black racism and white supremacy, the second KKK was more focused on Anglo-Saxonism, antisemitism, anti-atheism, and Christian identity. It was much less violent compared to the first and the third Klans, and its members swore to uphold American values and Christian morality. But the members weren’t completely non-violent. In 1921, the members kidnapped and severely beat Alex Johnson, a Black man who had been accused of having sex with a white woman.
The beating of Alex Johnson went unpunished, as both the police chief and district attorney of Dallas, where the crime took place, refused to prosecute, publicly stating that Johnson had it coming. Encouraged by the approval, Dallas Klansmen went on to whip nearly 70 individuals in 1922 alone. Interestingly, most of their victims were actually white men who had been accused of adultery, wife beating, abandoning their wives, or refusing to pay child support. Even gamblers weren’t spared.
Besides appealing to people who saw Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American, the Klan’s growth was also driven by marketing. The organization had its publicists and a business-like structure where members were paid a cut from initiation fees paid by recruits, which promoted growth. It didn’t rely squarely on violence and intimidation; it actively sought political power, and at the height of its growth, many of its members had been elected members of the U.S. Senate, as well as several other political functions.
However, the second half of the 1920s wasn’t kind to the Klan, and its influence declined as quickly as it rose. Internal corruption scandals, including the highly publicized conviction of Indiana Klan leader D. C. Stephenson for the rape and murder of a young woman, discredited the organization. While its membership had plummeted by the end of the decade, the KKK never fully disappeared, and some elements of its ideology are present in American politics to this day. Â
So, while the second KKK eventually collapsed under the weight of its own corruption, Birth of a Nation left a lasting impression on American society, as it legitimized racial terror and helped revive one of the country’s most infamous hate groups — while also serving as a precautionary tale about mixing entertainment with ideologies.