D.W. Griffith's silent film, The Birth of a Nation, opened in 1915 to tremendous public enthusiasm. Three hours in length, the movie won acclaim as a major breakthrough in the new genre of narrative film entertainment. But it received mixed reviews as a story of the national past. Presenting the history of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction in melodramatic form, the movie had an enduring impact on popular views of those historic issues and contributed to public perceptions of the nation's race relations.

Griffith based the movie on Thomas Dixon's novel, The Clansman (1905), which was the original name of the movie. In the novel, the southern-born Dixon warned that the inferior and bestial African Americans were a threat to the superior white race and advocated the subordination of blacks, by force in necessary. The southern-born Griffith shared many of the novelist's views about race.

In the movie, Griffith introduced several technical innovations (such as night shots of battle scenes illuminated by flares) that captured audience attention. Woodrow Wilson, the first southern-born president since the Civil War, had a private screening at the White House and described the movie as "writing history with lightning." He added: "My only regret is that it is all so terribly true." But many commentators, including leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), denounced the film's racist portrayals and demanded that local officials censor the movie. Meanwhile, a revived Ku Klux Klan used the movie to recruit new members. The debate about the film's historical accuracy added to its fame. By the 1940s, an estimated 200 million people had seen Birth of a Nation.

Although set in the past, Birth of a Nation should be seen as a reflection of attitudes, values, and politics of the Progressive era in which it was made. As such, the movie shows audiences today how Griffith, Wilson, and many of their contemporaries viewed the intersection of race, class, gender, and political power.

Birth of a Nation is divided into two parts:

Part I of the story opens with a title saying, "The bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion." The movie then shifts to a tragic love story involving two families: the Camerons who are part of the plantation aristocracy of South Carolina and the Stonemans of Pennsylvania, whose father is the patriarchal Austin Stoneman. In the movie, Austin Stone man is presented as a caricature of Representative Thaddeus Stevens, a radical Republican leader during Reconstruction. The sons of both families meet at boarding school and become friends, allowing the northern youths to spend a holiday in the mythic South. Their frolics are surrounded by the institution of slavery, "where life runs in a quaintly way that is to be no more."

This nostalgic view of plantation society is disrupted by the news of secession and the battle cry of the Civil War. The sons of both families soon enlist on opposite sides. With vivid details that evoke the war photography of Mathew Brady, Griffith depicts grand spectacles of battle, interspersed with the activities of the movie's characters. We see two boys, a Cameron and a Stoneman, die simultaneously as the war afflicts both families. When another Cameron son is wounded and faces a sentence of death, Griffith introduces Abraham Lincoln himself, titled "the Great Heart," who pardons the young rebel. When Lincoln is assassinated, the Camerons look anxiously to the future: "Our best friend is gone. What is to become of us now!"

Part II deals with Reconstruction, which begins with the following statement: "This is an historical presentation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Period, and is not meant to reflect on any race or people of today." However, the movie soon portrays swarms of corrupt whites--carpetbaggers from the North, scalawags from the South--who descend on the defeated land and "beguile and use the negroes" at the expense of the former southern leaders. The brutish ex-slaves keep whites from voting, force them off the sidewalks, leer at their women, and dare to wave signs that read: "Equal Rights, Equal Politics, Equal Marriage." Meanwhile, Congressman Stoneman promotes his mulatto assistant (Silas Lynch), "the equal of any man," and sends him south to organize the black vote against treacherous whites.
With control of the South Carolina legislature, Lieutenant Governor Lynch oversees the unruly black leaders who enact laws permitting racial intermarriage. Appalled by these changes, Ben Cameron concocts a plan to create the Ku Klux Klan, a vigilante group that wears white sheets to hide members' identity and intimidates blacks to restore the old social order.

As the KKK, vows to eliminate the "Black menace," a "renegade" black man, Gus, approaches Flora Cameron, the youngest white daughter, with an offer of marriage. Horrified by the prospect, she flees through the woods with Gus in pursuit. Then, with apparently no hope of escape, Flora jumps off a cliff to her death. Members of the KKK immediately seek revenge. Soon they capture Gus and proceed to lynch him (after early showings of the movie, Griffith deleted a scene indicating Gus's castration). The Klan then tosses his body on the statehouse steps, signifying a return to white power.
The mulatto Lynch then orders an attack on the Klan, and a race war begins. The Camerons are saved, however, by their loyal ex-slaves and by two white ex-Union soldiers who show a common unity for "their Aryan birthright." Meanwhile, Lynch, determined to have a white woman, traps Elsie Stoneman in a cabin. As she struggles for her honor, Ben Cameron leads a posse of Klansmen to her rescue. They arrive in the nick of time--not only to save Elsie from a fate worse than death, but also to establish a new nation of white supremacy that is symbolized by the marriage of the surviving children of the two families.

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