Theatre

On August 28, 1955, a fourteen year old boy from Chicago named Emmett Till was brutally murdered, his bloated and disfigured body left unrecognizable to friends and family. Emmets crime He allegedly whistled at a White woman, although it should be noted that most historians believe that even this flimsy justification for this young boys murder was fabricated by his killers. (Wright 129).   The United States has a long and shameful history of lynching Black men, and the 1915 silent classic, The Birth of A Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith,  has done its part to contribute to the heinous legacy.  Although clearly, the entire blame for the lynching of the African American male cannot be attributed to one cinematic venture, there is significant evidence that the film did, in fact, encourage acts of violence and lynching, in addition to driving up the membership of the Klu Klux Klan considerably. Particularly incendiary, was the films depiction of the  lynching of a character named  Gus, a freedman and educated soldier of the Union Army, who had the audacity the ask for a young White womans hand in marriage.  The reasoning behind Guss fictional lynching is in accord with the actual historical motivators for the thousands of confirmed crimes of this nature - that is, Black men were lynched because they were perceived as a sexual predators and a threat to the sexual amiability of the White woman (Kinney 149).  Behind that notion, of course, is the fact that the idea of free Black men existing side by side with Whites as equals in society, was a actually a threat to White male definitions of masculinity.

    Historically, the justification for the lynching of Black males has often been the threat of supposed sexual violence towards White women.  Black men were killed because they supposedly raped or attempted to rape White women. This is true in the case of Guss lynching in The Birth of A Nation.   In the film, Gus asks young, virginal Flora Cameron for her hand in marriage. Terrified by even the suggestion , the young girl flees from him.  Gus pursues her through the woods until she has cornered herself on a precipice of a cliff.  When Gus catches up with her, Flora jumps to her death.  We are to believe, as the viewer, that the prospect of Gus even getting anywhere near her terrifies the young girl so much that she would rather take her own life.  Although, even in the film, there is little indication that she is in any real danger from Gus.  He is portrayed as slightly lecherous and grabby in his attempt to keep Flora from running away from his marriage proposal, but there is no indication that he means her any physical harm, sexual or otherwise.  After Floras suicide, however, her older brother, Ben, avenges her death with the castration and ultimately brutal lynching and murder of Gus.  In the film, Ben is assisted in his act of vengeance by the members of the local Klu Klux Klan, a group he has organized and led himself.  Bens motivation and justification for the killing of Gus, parallels that which was frequently used in documented cases of lynching. 

    Just using the evidence in the film itself, one can infer that part of what motivated Ben in his crime was the fact that he felt emasculated by the prospect of the Black male being his equal.  Ben, a former Confederate soldier, has returned home defeated by the North.  Clinging to vestiges of the glorious past, the virtue of the Southern White female became a symbol of Souths former glory.  The protection and defense of her very chastity and innocence, therefore, was one of the only remaining ways in which the emasculated White Southern male could still assert his manhood and dignity.   If White males, in a way, needed to commit these crimes in order to reassert their masculinity, they also needed to find circumstances which allowed them to do so.  When the circumstances werent there for the taking, White males like Ben often fabricated the situations. In other words, they often outright lied about Black males sexual advances towards white women or imagined much more than was actually there. Although the viewer sees that Gus doesnt actually intend to physically harm Flora, Ben assumes that she was the victim of an attempted rape in order to justify his own crime.  In his article, The Rhetoric of Racism, James Kinney blatantly argues the reasoning behind Guss murder. Kinney writes that the point seems clear Blacks, like animals, are incapable of controlling sexual impulses.  If the Black man is ignorant and brutal, he will rape unless physically prevented.  If educated and granted social equality, he will seek to marry a White woman.  In either case, coexistence of Blacks and Whites in this country leads to the same thing - miscegenationthe destruction of the precious Anglo-Saxon race (149).

    The reason and justifications for lynching in the United States has a long history that precedes the Civil War.  We get hints at the sexualized stereotypes of not only the Black male, but also the Black female in Griffiths film. Early in the movie, we see White males (i.e. Austin Stoneman and his associate) make sexual overtures to Stonemans mulatto maid.  The very idea that Blacks, both males and females, were somehow more sexual than Whites was based on a fallacy invented by Whites to justify Slavery (Holmes 50).  If a Black woman was seen as sexually loose, then it was okay to rape her.  If Black males were viewed as sexual animals, then it was okay to beat and kill him. The White establishment could continue to view itself as good Christian people and simultaneously commit heinous acts towards other human beings if they somehow belived in the notion that Blacks were less than full human beings.  In fact, the work of French Naturalist, George Cuvier, in the early 1800s was largely used to support these preposterous claims and justify the rape of Black women and lynching of Black men.  Cuvier was infamous for exhibiting the Hottentot Venus around Europe, and then dissecting her sexual anatomy after she died as so-called proof of the Africans more sexualized nature (Holmes 71).

    Looking at Griffiths The Birth of A Nation in an historical context, it becomes clear that he was simply in line with the commonly-held beliefs of his time.  Yet, in reflecting these incendiary images in what was probably one of the first blockbuster films in cinematic history, he also reinforced the stereotypes and encouraged White Americans to participate in the lynching of Black males in increasing numbers. Although this fact does not take away from the films obvious cinematic accomplishments, Griffith must be held accountable, in an historical context, for his profound  contribution to this unjust  and shameful legacy.