Special screenings
The Birth of a Nation was shown in the White House, in the East Room, on February 18, 1915. Before this, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft had allowed motion pictures to be screened in the East Room. The Italian film Cabiria (1914) was shown on the lawn. The Birth of a Nation was attended by President Woodrow Wilson, members of his family, and members of his Cabinet. Both Dixon and Griffith were present. As put by Dixon, not an impartial source, "it repeated the triumph of the first showing."
There is dispute about Wilson's attitude toward the movie. A newspaper reported that he "received many letters protesting against his alleged action in Indorsing the pictures [sic]", including a letter from Massachusetts Congressman Thomas Chandler Thacher. The showing of the movie had caused "several near-riots". When former Assistant Attorney General William H. Lewis and A. Walters, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, called at the White House "to add their protests", President Wilson's private secretary Joseph Patrick Tumulty showed them a letter he had written to Thacher on Wilson's behalf. According to the letter, Wilson had been "entirely unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance." Dixon, in his autobiography, quotes Wilson as saying, when Dixon proposed showing the movie at the White House, that "I am pleased to be able to do this little thing for you, because a long time ago you took a day out of your busy life to do something for me." What Dixon had done for Wilson was to suggest him for an honorary degree, which Wilson received, from Dixon's alma mater, Wake Forest College.
Dixon had been a fellow graduate student in history with Wilson at Johns Hopkins University and in 1913 dedicated his historical novel about Lincoln, The Southerner, to "our first Southern-born president since Lincoln, my friend and collegemate Woodrow Wilson". The evidence that Wilson knew "the character of the play" in advance of seeing it is circumstantial but very strong: "Given Dixon's career and the notoriety attached to the play The Clansman, it is not unreasonable to assume that Wilson must have had some idea of at least the general tenor of the film." The movie was based on a best-selling novel and was preceded by a stage version (play) which was received with protests in several cities—in some cities it was prohibited—and received a great deal of news coverage. Wilson issued no protest when The Washington Evening Star, at that time Washington, D.C.'s newspaper of record, reported in advance of the showing, in language suggesting a press release from Dixon and Griffiths, that Dixon was "a schoolmate of President Wilson and is an intimate friend" and that Wilson's interest in it "is due to the great lesson of peace it teaches." Wilson, and only Wilson, is quoted by name in the movie for his observations on American history and the title of Wilson's book (History of the American People) is mentioned as well. The three title cards with quotations from Wilson's book read (ellipses and underscore in the original):
"Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes... In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences."
"... The policy of the congressional leaders wrought…a veritable overthrow of civilization in the South... in their determination to 'put the white South under the heel of the black South.'"
"The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the southern country."
In the same book, Wilson has harsh words about the abyss between the original goals of the Klan and that into which it evolved. Dixon has been accused of misquoting Wilson.
In 1937, a popular magazine reported that Wilson said of the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson over the years had several times used the metaphor of illuminating history as if by lightning and he may well have said it at the time. The accuracy of his saying it was "terribly true" is disputed by historians; there is no contemporary documentation of the remark. Vachel Lindsay, a popular poet of the time, is known to have referred to the film as "art by lightning flash."
On February 19, 1915, Griffith and Dixon held a showing of the film in the Raleigh Hotel ballroom, which they had rented for the occasion. Early that morning, Dixon called on a North Carolina friend, Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy. Daniels set up a meeting that morning for Dixon with Edward Douglass White, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Initially Justice White was not interested in seeing the film, but when Dixon told him it was the "true story" of Reconstruction and the Klan's role in "saving the South", White, recalling his youth in Louisiana, jumped to attention and said: "I was a member of the Klan, sir". With White agreeing to see the film, the rest of the Supreme Court followed. In addition to the entire Supreme Court, in the audience were "many members of Congress and members of the diplomatic corps", the Secretary of the Navy, 38 members of the Senate, and about 50 members of the House of Representatives. The audience of 600 "cheered and applauded throughout."
In Griffith's words, the showings to the president and the entire Supreme Court conferred an "honor" upon Birth of a Nation. Dixon and Griffith used this commercially.
The following day, Griffith and Dixon transported the film to New York City for review by the National Board of Censorship. They presented the film as "endorsed" by the President and the cream of Washington society. The Board approved the film by 15 to 8.
A warrant to close the theater in which the movie was to open was dismissed after a long-distance call to the White House confirmed that the film had been shown there.
Justice White was very angry when advertising for the film stated that he approved it, and he threatened to denounce it publicly.
Dixon, a racist and white supremacist, was clearly rattled and upset by criticism from African Americans that the movie encouraged hatred against them, and he wanted the endorsement of as many powerful men as possible to offset such criticism. Dixon always vehemently denied having anti-black prejudices—despite the way his books promoted white supremacy—and stated: "My books are hard reading for a Negro, and yet the Negroes, in denouncing them, are unwittingly denouncing one of their greatest friends".
In a letter sent on May 1, 1915, to Joseph P. Tumulty, Wilson's secretary, Dixon wrote: "The real purpose of my film was to revolutionize Northern sentiments by a presentation of history that would transform every man in the audience into a good Democrat... Every man who comes out of the theater is a Southern partisan for life!" In a letter to President Wilson sent on September 5, 1915, Dixon boasted: "This play is transforming the entire population of the North and the West into sympathetic Southern voters. There will never be an issue of your segregation policy". Dixon was alluding to the fact that Wilson, upon becoming president in 1913, had allowed cabinet members to impose segregation on federal workplaces in Washington, D.C. by reducing the number of black employees through demotion or dismissal.
.jpg?width=400)
.jpg?width=400)
