Protests and Arrests at Birth of a Nation Revival screening
One hundred years ago today … Picketers and protesters greeted the revival of Birth of a Nation, screening at the Capitol Theater, 51st Street and Broadway, the largest movie house in New York.
1921 poster. Movieposters.com.
1921 lobby card. Heritage Auctions.
Five Black people were arrested by the New York Police Department.
New York Herald, 7 May 1921, p. 14. Newspapers.com.
As noted in the Herald, among those arrested were civil rights activist and future F.B.I. bogeyman E. Fraklin Frazier (Keen, 95); among those involved (though not arrested) were Walter White, N.A.A.C.P. secretary.
The revival was an opportunity for new campaigns against D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film, which promotes a white supremacist version of the history of the restoration south and was being used as a recruitment tool for the Ku Klux Klan. The Age decried the movie in a column that itself borrows extensively from the New York Call’s editorial.
New York Age, 14 May 1921, p. 6. Newspapers.com.
The column invokes contemporary discussions of movie censorship.
Note: NY1920s has covered the KKK’s early-1920s encroachment into NYC in numerous posts.
References/ Further reading:
Keen, Mike Forrest. Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Surveillance of American Sociology. United Kingdom: Greenwood Press, 1999. 95
– Jonathan Goldman, May 6, 2021
TAGS: racism, cinema, movies, protest, demonstration, KKK, censorship