Mobilizing Racist Collective Memory: "The Birth of a Nation" and Racial Violence

• In Event: The Legacies of Historical Violence

Abstract

Ethnic and racial violence is frequently justified on the basis of alleged historical wrongs perpetrated by the targeted group. The dissemination and institutionalization of these historical narratives is often the work of ethnic or racial political movements. Yet it is unclear whether spreading narratives that demonize out-groups causes more ethnic and racial violence or merely arises to justify it. This paper addresses this question by examining the consequences of mobilizing racist collective memories in popular culture on violence and support for white supremacy. Released in 1915, "The Birth of a Nation" was the first feature-length film to reach a mass audience in the United States. While it's popularity made it a cultural touchstone, it put to film narratives that justified lynching on the basis of racials exual threat and celebrated the use of racial violence to topple Reconstruction governments and deny African Americans suffrage. The negative portrayal of African Americans and its endorsement of both the "Lost Cause" narrative and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan led the NAACP and other African American groups to demand censorship of the film across the country, and historians have credited the film with facilitating the rebirth of the Klan in the 1920s. This paper uses novel data on where and when "Birth of a Nation" was shown to examine its effect on lynching, the creation of Klan chapters, and racist and white supremacist language in local newspapers. The film was shown as a travelling roadshow that made stops at towns between larger performances in major cities. Using a difference-in-difference design and comparisons with towns that could have been exposed to the film, but were not, I estimate the causal effect of the film on racial violence and support for white supremacy.

Author

• Michael Weaver, The University of British Columbia