As an undergraduate at the University of Utah, I took a class on the history of film. One of the movies we watched was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.[i] In honor of Black History Month, I decided to watch it again. Then I realized it was over three hours long. But I did watch selected scenes. But you can watch the entire movie on YouTube.

Our professor lauded the film’s technical achievements. Although a silent movie, it was the first to have a fully developed story and a musical score. It had first-of-its-kind camera techniques such as close-ups, angle shots, crosscuts, and fade-outs. It had a cast of over eighteen thousand and three thousand horses. And my professor sang its praises. But I don’t remember him saying a single word about its content.

Growing up in a lily-white community, I knew little about Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan. My knowledge of the discriminatory South was limited to what I read in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. But my higher education began while watching that film. The Birth of a Nation is the story of two White families on both sides of the Civil War. After its defeat, the South is portrayed as victims of Northern carpetbaggers and newly-freed African Americans. And who comes to the rescue of those poor Southerners? The Ku Klux Klan!

Film critic Roger Ebert once said, “The Birth of a Nation is not a bad film because it argues for evil… it is a great film that argues for evil.” Most of the Black characters are played by Whites in blackface. But to me, one of the worst aspects of the film is its stereotypes of African Americans as lazy, drunkards, uncouth, and unintelligent—who would rather eat fried chicken than accomplish anything of substance other than pass a bill allowing the intermarrying of Blacks and Whites, much to the horror of Whites. Here is a scene from the film depicting the new state legislature of South Carolina after Reconstruction, made up of 101 Blacks and only 23 Whites:

Many of those stereotypes persisted for generations. Some stereotypes have changed today, but we still make them. In the parody, American Fiction,[ii] stereotypes of African Americans are the basis of the story. Monk Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright) writes literary fiction. But when he saw others profiting from Black stereotypes, he decided to write a book using over-the-top caricatures of Blacks, placing him in the middle of the hypocrisy he claims to hate. It’s a laugh a minute. But after the laughter faded, I was left to wonder why we continue to perpetuate stereotypes of the races. Here is the trailer from the film:

American Fiction won the People’s Choice Award at both the Toronto Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival and was nominated for Best Picture this year.

One of the most thought-provoking films I saw during Black History Month was Origin,[iii] based on the book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Wilkerson is the Pulitzer Prize winner for The Warmth of Other Suns, which tells the story of three families who participated in the Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to the North to escape segregation. Again, this was something I was never taught growing up. From 1910 to 1970, more than six million African Americans migrated north and west. They went to where the factories were because that was where the jobs were. And although these African Americans didn’t face the overt discrimination of the Jim Crow South, it was still there. They were funneled into the lowest-paying jobs in the harshest industries—iron and steel foundries, slaughterhouses, and meatpacking. However, during the Great Depression, those same African Americans were the first to be let go.

Origin portrays how Wilkerson was inspired to write Caste. In the film, Wilkerson argues that race relations are not based on racism but are part of a long-established caste system similar to Germany’s society during the reign of Hitler and the caste system of India. In America, Whites are the top class, and Blacks are at the bottom, and the system is designed to keep it that way. The film shows us the death of Trayvon Martin, a Black Little Leaguer who is not allowed to swim in the pool at his mostly White team’s victory celebration, and other examples of the upper caste maintaining its superiority over the lower castes.

Here is the trailer for the film:

I also watched a short documentary entitled Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day[iv] (and currently streaming on Paramount). It depicts several lynchings of African Americans in the South and how photographs from these lynchings were turned into postcards that Southerners sent to friends and relatives throughout the country. The primary lynching the documentary focuses on is when that occurred in Waco, Texas, in 1916. Jesse Washington was a seventeen-year-old boy. Authorities arrested him for the murder of Lucy Fryer, and Washington ultimately confessed. Washington’s trial took about an hour. The jury deliberated for four minutes, rendering a guilty verdict and sentencing him to death. But the crowd at the courthouse couldn’t wait for the judicial system to execute justice.

The mob chained Washington around the neck and dragged him out of the courthouse. They paraded him through the street while they beat and stabbed him. If that wasn’t enough, the mob then held Washington down while they castrated him. But it didn’t stop there. He was then lynched in front of Waco’s city hall. But even that was not enough. The mob cut off his fingers, poured oil over him, and roasted his body over a fire for about two hours. After they put out the fire, they took his charred body, as shown in this postcard, and dragged it through the town. Over 10,000 people watched it, including police and city officials. Many children attended during their lunch hour. One of those 10,000 was a professional photographer who took photographs of the event. The pictures were printed and sold as postcards. I had never learned that, between 1877 and 1950, there were over 4,000 lynchings in this country of Black men, women, and children, Yes, that’s right. We lynched women and children, and even some Whites. After many failed attempts over twelve decades, the United States finally passed the Emmitt Till Antilynching Act in 2022, making lynching a federal hate crime.

Two summers ago, I had the opportunity to travel through parts of Germany. The people there impressed me by their willingness to talk about the caste system established by Hitler. “We must talk about it,” someone told me, “for that is the only way to prevent it from happening again.” In contrast, here in America, we don’t like to talk about our caste system, and some states have even passed laws against teaching about our discriminatory past.   

My favorite scene from Origin is when Isabel Wilkerson’s basement floods, and she calls a plumber. The plumber happens to be White. And when he sees that the repair is in a Black woman’s home, he does everything he can to avoid doing the work. But then something extraordinary happens. She tells the plumber that she recently lost her husband and asks the plumber if he has ever lost someone close to him. And suddenly, Isabel was no longer just a member of the lowest caste; she became a person with hopes, fears, loves, and tragedies like all of us. His whole persona changed, and he was happy to do the work for her.

I have often said that understanding breeds empathy, and empathy breeds love. If we are ever to destroy America’s caste system or systemic racism or whatever you want to label it. I close with these words from Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues: “And he thought of those he angered for he was not a violent man. And he thought of those he hurt, for he was not a cruel man. And he thought of those he frightened, for he was not an evil man. And he understood. He understood himself. Upon this, he saw that when he was angered or knew hurt or felt fear, it was because he was not understanding. And he learned compassion. And with his eye of compassion, he saw his enemies like unto himself, and he learned love.”

May that be true with all of us.

---

[i] The Birth of a Nation:

• Production Companies: D.W. Griffith Corp. and Epoch Producing Corporation
• Director: D.W. Griffith
• Screenwriters: Thomas Dixon, Jr., D.W. Griffith, and Frank E. Woods
• Starring: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, and Henry B. Walthall
• Release Date: March 21, 1915

[ii] American Fiction:

• Production Companies: 3 Arts Entertainment, MRC Film, and Media Rights Capital (MRC)
• Director: Cord Jefferson
• Screenwriters: Cord Jefferson and Percival Everett
• Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, and John Ortiz
• Release Date: December 22, 2023

[iii] Origin:

• Production Companies: ARRAY Filmworks and J4A
• Director: Ava DuVernay
• Screenwriters: Ava DuVernay and Isabel Wilkerson
• Starring: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, and Niecy Nash
• Release Date: January 19, 2024

[iv] Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day:

• Production Company: Peralta Pictures
• Director: Christine Turner
• Starring: Darian Dauchan, Biko Eisen-Martin, and Jimmie Jeter
• Release Date: November 11, 2021