Dick Lehr

The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America's Civil War Dick Lehr

In 1915, two men?one a journalist agitator, the other a technically brilliant filmmaker?incited a public confrontation that roiled America, pitting black against white, Hollywood against Boston, and free speech against civil rights. Monroe Trotter and D. W. Griffith were fighting over a film, a dazzling new photoplay that dramatized the Civil War and Reconstruction in a post-Confederate South, where freed slaves were portrayed as villainous, vengeful, slovenly and dangerous to the sanctity of American values.

D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation included actors in black face, heroic portraits of Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and a depiction of Lincoln's assassination. It was tremendously successful, eventually seen by 25 million Americans, and notable for being the first feature film shown in the White House for President Woodrow Wilson?who is believed to have said, "it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." But, of course, it wasn't. Violent protests against the film were flaring up across the country through Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and other cities?and spearheading the unrest was the struggling newspaperman Trotter.

Monroe Trotter's titanic crusade?against D. W. Griffith, President Woodrow Wilson, and Booker T. Washington among others?to have the film censored became a blueprint for dissent that activists relied on during the historic civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. This is the fiery story of a revolutionary moment for mass media and the nascent Civil Rights Movement, and the men clashing over the cultural and political soul of a still-young America standing at the cusp of its greatest days.