The absolute best article about the racism and technical innovations displayed in Birth is "Birth of a Nation - Propaganda as History" by the late historian John Hope Franklin. I will copy this article for you by Friday 10/11. The article gives an excellent background about how Thomas Dixon was able to get D.W. Griffith to make the film, and all the controversy surrounding it. Dixon wrote to Joseph Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson's secretary in May 1915 that, "the real purpose of my film was to revolutionize Northern sentiments by a presentation of history that would transform every man in my audience into a good Democrat....every man who comes out of our theater is a Southern partisan for life." Not only did the film distort the truth of the Reconstruction period (1866-1877), but it sparked the rebirth of the KKK in 1915 after having been suppressed from the 1870s, finally reaching 4 million members by the 1920s.
The legacy of Birth is still with America through stereotypes, racism, discrimination and a distorted view of history. For a more accurate version of Reconstruction, read Eric Foner's Reconstruction, or W.E.B. DuBois' Black Reconstruction. The result of the backlash against black progress during the Reconstruction era - Jim Crow segregation, rampant racism, and de facto slavery reintroduced. The legacy of Birth runs deep and keeps running.
Here's some more info. you can check:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/02/birth-of-a-nation-revisited.html
http://www.thefinaltake.com/the-birth-of-propaganda-d-w-griffiths-the-birth-of-a-nation/
Protesting the film:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/episodes/the-birth-of-a-nation-and-black-protest/
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