"MINNESOTA HISTORY" DOCUMENTS BIRTH OF A NATION INFLUENCE IN THE TC

 

The Spring 2023 issue of “Minnesota History,” the excellent periodic magazine of the Publications division of the Minnesota Historical Society carries an excellent and intriguing if upsetting article. It’s title is “White Supremacy On Parade.” The piece describes in lengthy detail the impact of a major film of the early Twentieth Century on the people and governments of the Twin Cities in the second decade.

The film is “Birth of a Nation,” the blockbuster action adventure of 1915. It was produced by the famous innovating producer/director, and pioneering film maker, D.W. Griffith. I participated in a film history course at the University of Minnesota and had the opportunity to see the full version twice. Originally Birth of A Nation, allowed the producers to exalt the white racist version of the Civil War and Reconstruction, as an alternative to the truth.

We viewed and discussed the film twice because the class decided that the film had much to teach students about both film-making history and about race relations history in the United States, but the two subjects deserved separate examination.

Historically, Minneapolis and Saint Paul addressed the question of race relations and the positive or destructive value of the film on our local populace in different ways. Author Drew Ross draws on a multiplicity of contemporaneous sources to lay out a detailed picture of the city leaders involved, the committees that formed and dissolved, the way the NAACP was helped by the activist community here and the remnants of racism that remain in the Twin Cities.

I was most surprised to learn of the large attraction of local white citizens to the souvenir robes that were widely sought. The story of “Birth of A Nation,” in Minneapolis and Saint Paul in 1917 is a story well-worth reading. Racism is not gone from Minnesota.