D W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation

by Melvyn Stokes

  Chicago

  While major battles against The Birth of a Nation were being fought in New York and Boston, the national NAACP was always on the alert to try to prevent it from being shown in other places. In mid-March, May C. Nerney wrote to Dr. Charles E. Bentley to ask if the film had yet been advertised in Chicago. In April, after local rumor and a notice in one of the Chicago dailies seemed to suggest that its arrival in the city was imminent, she several times urged Bentley and the local branch to oppose it.117 The NAACP quickly discovered both that an official permit had been issued allowing the film to be shown in Chicago and that the permit itself had been acquired in a way that was highly irregular. Normally, permits for motion pictures in the city were granted by the Second Deputy Superintendent of Police, on the advice of a three-person Board of Censors chaired by the formidable Major Lucius C. Funkhouser. In the case of Birth of a Nation, a screening was arranged by Charles Fitzmorris, secretary of the lame-duck mayor of Chicago, Carter H. Harrison. The only other person present at the screening appears to have been Mrs. Carter Harrison, the mayor’s wife, a writer of film scenarios who had been born and brought up in the South. When the screening was over, Fitzmorris apparently informed Funkhouser that the film was acceptable and—without either the deputy police superintendent or any member of the Board of Censors actually having seen it—a permit to show the film at the Illinois Theater was granted.118 Once the local NAACP became aware of the circumstances under which the permit had been issued, it launched a campaign to persuade the incoming mayor, Republican William H. Thompson, to rescind it.

  Thompson, Chicago’s mayor from 1915 to 1923 and again from 1927 to 1931, was a machine politician almost as legendary as Curley in Boston. It was later asserted that he owed a particular debt of gratitude to Chicago African Americans who, by voting decisively for him in the primaries, had helped him win the Republican nomination and thus launch his mayoral career.119 For whatever reason, Thompson seemed open to persuasion where The Birth of a Nation was concerned. On May 4, Charles Bentley of the Chicago NAACP asserted that if the new mayor found the film “as offensive as has been represented,” he would not hesitate to rescind its permit.120 Both the NAACP and local representatives of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee machine seem to have been both active and effective in putting pressure on Thompson.121 In mid-May, with the battle against the film in New York virtually over and the struggle to pass a new censorship bill in Boston in its final climactic week, the Chicago mayor handed the opponents of the film what must have seemed their first clear-cut victory: he summarily revoked the film’s permit, thereby effectively banning it from being shown in his city. While Thompson gave no immediate explanation for his decision, he appears to have relied on a section of the Chicago City Code preventing the issuance of a permit to any film tending “to create contempt for any class of law-abiding citizens.”122

  While critics of the film hastened to congratulate Mayor Thompson on his decision,123 the producers of The Birth of a Nation began to mount their counterattack. In contrast with the battles over the film in New York and Boston, the political struggle in Chicago took place well before the film was due to open. Most of the attempts to suppress or cut Birth in New York and Boston had been weakened because it was already running in those cities and was supported by a groundswell of audience enthusiasm and critical acclaim.124 To set the ball rolling toward the creation of a similar sentiment in Chicago, the film’s producers began to arrange private showings for the city’s opinion makers.125 Moreover, although there was no evidence to back up their fears, opponents of the film suspected the Griffith forces, a few days after the permit for the film was withdrawn, of attempting to get a bill through the state legislature that would have inaugurated a state system of film censorship. “From what I know of Griffith,” May Nerney wrote to Charles Bentley on May 21, “I think he may be back of this … [I]f he thought a State censorship which he might be able to bribe would enable him to put on this photo play, I am sure he would work for one.” Nerney urged the Chicago NAACP to get involved in the fight against the censorship bill, lest it prove a means of allowing The Birth of a Nation to be shown in the Windy City after all.126 In reality, both the censorship bill and an alternative measure—sponsored by R. R. Jackson, a black member of the Illinois legislature—designed to ban any film that might encourage race hatred by showing “a lynching or unlawful hanging” were essentially distractions from the real battle over Griffith’s film.127 For on June 5, to the dismay of Birth’s opponents, an injunction was issued preventing the city from interfering with the movie’s exhibition.128

  Thompson’s revocation of the permit to show Birth brought the issue of censoring films to the forefront of political debate in Chicago. The mayor’s decision was criticized by the Tribune and the Examiner and supported by the Herald.129 Under pressure from the producers of the film and in response to the furor that had now broken out, Thompson apparently began to weaken: he first offered to view the film himself, then to abide by the advice of a “delegation of colored ministers” once they had seen it.130 The mayor, however, was about to lose his principal role in the drama. On June 2, Joseph J. McCarthy, acting on behalf of the film’s producers, filed a petition in the Superior Court of Cook County asking for an injunction to restrain the city authorities from interfering with the exhibition of The Birth of a Nation in Chicago.131 A hearing, presided over by Judge William Fenimore Cooper, was speedily arranged for June 4. That hearing did not go well for the NAACP forces (who were unhappy at having to go to trial with only twenty hours notice). While Nerney had provided them with a good deal of newspaper material, none of the NAACP witnesses had actually seen the film. Birth’s producers fielded four witnesses who were familiar with the film in addition to Griffith, whom even the hostile Charles E. Bentley judged as “suave.”132 In delivering his opinion, Judge Cooper mocked the argument of the city’s lawyers that exhibiting the film would promote racial animosity against African Americans. This would be true, he argued, only if those seeing the play were “so stupid” that they were incapable of understanding that the people represented on screen “were of two to three generations ago” and, partly as a consequence, did not appreciate that in the years since “the negro race has advanced almost immeasurably.” He also insisted that the film dealt as much with good black men and bad white men as with bad black men. It was, the judge insisted, the duty of the legal system to protect property rights. The producers and lessee of The Birth of a Nation, having properly secured a permit and paid a fee, were now the possessors of such a property right in the film and could not be arbitrarily deprived of it without due process of law. In drawing up his opinion, Cooper clearly relied heavily (though this was not directly acknowledged) on the Fourteenth Amendment.133

  The producers of The Birth of a Nation were jubilant when the injunction was issued on June 5. That same night, the film began its run at the Illinois Theater and at the end of the performance, Griffith appeared on stage to plead for “a square deal for the motion picture.” He publicly thanked Judge Cooper, who was in the audience, for his courage in allowing the film to be shown.134 But the city authorities were not yet prepared to concede defeat. Four municipal censors were ordered to view the film and compile a report, which counsel for the mayor proposed to use in asking that the injunction be overturned.135 In the meantime, the censors harassed the film by refusing to allow the “Hampton epilogue” to be shown with it (on the grounds it had not been included in the original application for a permit) and insisting that no one younger than twenty-one be admitted to screenings.136 When Cooper declined to set aside his injunction, lawyers acting on behalf of the city filed an appeal. The local branch of the NAACP began to gather witnesses who had seen the film and were ready to testify against it. They were hopeful that the judicial system would permit the suppression of the film. But national secretary Nerney, conscious of earlier legal failures in New York and Boston, was much less confident.137 Her pessimism was justified. On July 15, t
he suit to set aside Cooper’s injunction was held over until the fall term of the Appellate Court. In effect, with the film now free to run over the summer to packed houses, Birth’s Chicago critics had lost. Thomas W. Allinson, secretary of the local NAACP, consoled himself with the thought that some of the most objectionable scenes—including that of Gus chasing Flora—had been cut and some intertitles modified.138 Clearly, however, the forces fighting to have the film suppressed had experienced yet another major defeat.

  Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania

  At the beginning of 1915, three states had their own censorship boards: Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania board approved The Birth of a Nation very quickly. The quality of the film may have been one reason for the decision (the chairman of the censorship board, J. Louis Breitinger, described it as “the highest development of motion picture production” at a special showing organized for members of the state legislature). But with the board under attack from independent filmmakers for being in the pocket of the General Film Company (the distributing arm of Edison’s attempted movie monopoly, the Motion Picture Patents Company) and with a bill for its abolition already before the legislature, approving a film such as Birth—made and distributed by independents—may also have been a sensible political move for the censors.139 Their endorsement of Griffith’s film, however, made the task of fighting it considerably harder in Pennsylvania. Although the NAACP at times floated the idea of asking the state board to reconsider its decision,140 their efforts to suppress Birth focused mainly on city authorities. As soon as the movie was announced as a forthcoming attraction in Pittsburgh, for example, a committee from the NAACP and other organizations called on Mayor Joseph G. Armstrong in protest. At the same time, a new ordinance prepared by the president of the city’s NAACP branch was introduced to the city council to ban any entertainment “which incites to riot or tends to disturb the public peace; or prejudice the public mind against any class of law-abiding citizens.” In late August, lobbied by a delegation of over one hundred African Americans, Armstrong announced that he would not permit the forthcoming presentation of The Birth of a Nation “unless forced by [the] courts to do so.” The mayor’s afterthought was prophetic: lawyers acting on behalf of the film’s producers quickly secured an injunction to prevent him from interfering with its exhibition.141

  In Philadelphia, there was more reason to anticipate disorder than in most other cities and also, perhaps, more reason to anticipate that Birth would be suppressed. When Dixon’s play The Clansman had been performed there in 1911, there had there been serious riots and the mayor at the time had insisted that such performances be stopped. Perhaps most encouraging of all for the NAACP, an attempt to mount a legal challenge to his decision had failed.142 The Birth of a Nation was advertised to open in Philadelphia on September 4. In the days running up to this, the NAACP and other organizations concentrated much of their attention on lobbying Director of Public Safety Porter. There were “overwhelming protests” from black groups, including one claiming to represent 20,000 African American “Knights of Pythias,” and Porter was also informed that “many negroes had purchased tickets for the opening performance.” The director of public safety traveled outside the state to see the film, emerging from the screening with the conviction that “it was not a proper subject for Philadelphia with a larger negro population than any other Northern city.” In the end, Porter “ordered the production stopped, claiming the possibility of serious disturbance if the play was allowed to go on.” This time, however, the ban was not sustained in the courts: Judge Ferguson of Court Number Four in Philadelphia had also viewed the film and had seen nothing in it likely to provoke “disturbances or riots.” Consequently, he was happy to issue an injunction to stop the authorities from interfering with the production.143

  In the days that followed, black Philadelphians tried hard to have the injunction vacated. When their efforts failed, they began to plan for more direct action against the film. On September 20, printed cards were distributed across the city calling African Americans and white sympathizers to a protest meeting that night outside the Forrest Theater, where Birth was showing. The organizers of the demonstration were a group of black clergymen of various denominations. During the day, two meetings were held in Philadelphia churches that were attended by “nearly all negro ministers in the city”; they listened to a series of “fiery addresses” denouncing Griffith’s film and calling for its suppression.144 Almost certainly, the planned demonstration was intended to be peaceable. But since the film’s opening, Director of Public Safety Porter had ensured that a large force of police was present, both inside and outside the theater, to prevent trouble. The police presence, together with the inflamed passions of the black community, made some kind of confrontation at the theater almost inevitable. At first, the demonstration, involving around 500 black men and women, was quiet enough. But at some point, a brick was thrown through the plateglass window at the entrance to the theater, and around 150 police charged the protestors, using their night sticks freely to break up the demonstration. At one point a revolver was fired, though it was unclear whether this was done by a policeman or a demonstrator. Several arrests were made, although only one man—a nineteen-year-old black youth—was charged (with “inciting a riot”). Many demonstrators were hurt and needed medical treatment for head injuries. The “respectable” character of the demonstration may be judged from the social profile of those arrested or injured: according to a local newspaper, they were all drawn from “the educated classes, a lawyer, two ministers and several doctors and institutional heads being among the number.”145 The day after the demonstration, a group of five prominent African Americans met with Mayor Blankenburg to ask that he suppress the film and to demand a hearing at which they could voice their protests against it; one member of the delegation—variously reported as Dr. W. A. Sinclair, who worked for the Douglass Hospital, or Dr. Martin—had a bandage on his head because of the injuries he had received the previous evening. Blakenburg (shades of James Michael Curley) told the committee that he was not certain he had the power to stop the film and insisted that the planned hearing also include the “film’s manager.”146 Nothing came of the hearing, and apart from an attempt by black ministers to exploit the issue by asking candidates in that fall’s municipal elections to state where they stood on The Birth of a Nation,147 the campaign against the film in Philadelphia—and, indeed, in Pennsylvania generally—came abruptly to an end.148

  In Ohio, the story was very different as the Cleveland NAACP had already flexed its political muscles. In combination with figures such as former politician Harry C. Smith, editor of the Cleveland Gazette, and allies in the Ministers’ Association, the NAACP had convinced the State Board of Censorship to withdraw its approval for The Nigger, a film about miscegenation based on a play by Edward Sheldon. This victory was apparently secured by persuading Republican governor Frank B. Willis to exert pressure on the board.149 When NAACP national secretary May C. Nerney suggested, therefore, that the Cleveland branch protest to the mayor concerning the impending exhibition of The Birth of a Nation in the city, the local secretary pointed out that the successful struggle against The Nigger “shows we can accomplish more by an appeal to Gov. Frank B. Willis.”150 Sometime in early April, the Cleveland NAACP wrote to the governor protesting the possibility that Birth should be exhibited, and Willis passed on their comments to the board of censors. There were then several weeks of major confusion, with Nerney trying on the part of the national organization to discover whether the Board of Censors had actually refused permission for Birth of a Nation to be shown in Ohio and some of her correspondents in the state apparently not appreciating that The Nigger and The Birth of a Nation were two different films. In late May, the NAACP finally learned from Charles B. Williams, chairman of the Ohio Board of Censors, that Birth had not yet been submitted to the board for its decision.151 Perhaps, as some NAACP members thought, the withdrawal of the permit for The Nigger had discouraged
Birth’s producers from applying for one. Or perhaps Epoch was waiting for the result of the Ohio film exhibitors’ campaign to have the board of censors eliminated.152

  During the summer, however, a revised version of The Nigger, with many scenes cut, was finally approved by the Ohio censors and began screenings under a new title, The Mystery of Morrow’s Rest; also, the attempt to eliminate the censorship board failed. There was no point in waiting any longer, so Birth of a Nation was finally submitted to the censorship board. The NAACP and its allies sprang into action and the board received “numerous” letters of protest from African Americans. They were delighted when the censors, in late September, rejected the film on the grounds that it might arouse prejudice against blacks and also between North and South.153 The politics behind this decision would be made clear a few weeks later by May C. Nerney, who visited Columbus, Ohio, as part of a tour of Midwest NAACP branches. The chairman of the Ohio censors, Charles B. Williams, had been “all right” and had opposed the film. Another member of the board, W. R. Wilson had been “wobbly.” The last member of the three-person board, Maude Murray Miller, had been rabidly in favor of Griffith’s film. Miller, Nerney reported, was “‘a Southern woman,’ the worst Bourbon I ever met.” She apparently believed that Birth of a Nation “was a great education to the North” and that after “a few slight changes” to the intertitles, it “must be shown in Ohio.” (Miller would also inform an aghast Nerney “that if it was not for us Northerners she would still be living on her plantation like a lady instead of working for a living.”) In order to bring the “wobbly” members of the board into line, the black Robert B. Barcus, attorney for the Columbus NAACP, and the white former Secretary of State Ryan had persuaded the Ohio Civil Service Commission to make it clear that members of the board of censors who voted to approve Griffith’s film would lose their jobs.154 It is probable that Frank B. Willis, who promised Nerney that Birth would not be shown in Ohio as long as he remained governor, exerted similar pressure.155