Library of Congress Recognition Undeserved for ‘Birth of a Nation’

The recognition of thW. Griffith film “Birth of a Nation” by the Library of Congress (“More Classic Films,” Calendar, Dec. 4) is an insult to more than 30 million African-Americans and every fair-minded moviegoer in America, and a repudiation of everything the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People stands for.

It is difficult to understand how Librarian of Congress James H. Billington can defend this choice as a film that has “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.”

Billington knows as well as anyone that this film that was such a hit in 1915 with white America depicted blacks as ape-like buffoons lusting after the South’s fair and genteel white womanhood. The newly elected South Carolina black legislative representatives were portrayed as frolickers, picking their toes and eating fried chicken, and the Ku Klux Klan--shown as a corps of clean-cut brave sons of the South--fighting the supposed unfairness and moral corruption of the Reconstruction Period.

The movie is based on the novel “The Clansman,” and is neither “historical” nor “cultural.’

If the meaning of history is the accurate record of our past, “The Birth of a Nation” can never be cited for its historical significance. Griffith tells us the newly freed slaves’ sole preoccupation was chasing white women and frolicking.

What has been handed down to me through our oral history is that most of these men and women were God-fearing, hard-working, church-going family folk.

The NAACP was hardly 6 years old in 1915, but being a small, struggling, underfinanced new group on the block didn’t stop it from challenging the already glamorous Hollywood mystique and one of its foremost citizens--D. W. Griffith. We marched in front of theaters that dared exhibit “Birth of a Nation.” We led protests, urging blacks and whites not to see it. We preached against it in our churches and criticized it in our press. But in the end, a record number of whites went to see and applaud it, while a handful of curious blacks quietly cringed in horror.

We led the protests against Griffith’s distorted and hate-filled film because we knew it would encourage and abet even more night riders and vigilantes who were already terrorizing blacks, Jews and Catholics throughout the South. And the records show we were right. Wanton lynchings, marauding and other acts of violence increased.

There was not only a resurgence of Klan membership, but for the first time, klaverns sprung up in the Northern states such as Ohio and Indiana. And those who had praised Griffith and “The Birth of a Nation” quietly turned their heads away from the suffering.

I recognize that some feel this film must be honored or recognized because of its “aesthetic significance.” Others have argued that the Nazi propaganda films also should be saluted for their “cinematic creativity.” We in the NAACP reject those arguments and will continue to loudly protest those who try to present them.

We will never focus on the “aesthetics” of the hate films emanating out of Nazi Germany during the race-mad Hitler regime, nor will we quietly allow the U.S. Library of Congress to glorify the supposed aesthetics of “The Birth of a Nation.”

I have called on President Bush to overrule the Library of Congress’ decision to honor this perverted film. I also have called upon members of Congress and President-elect Bill Clinton to speak out about this latest affront to racial minorities around the country.

To honor this film and its filmmaker is to pay tribute to America’s shameful racial history and to encourage a repeat of that history. With the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, the skinhead movement, the Aryan Nation and young neo-Nazis in Germany, such an honor sends the wrong message.