![]() ![]() ![]() In 1939 another Hollywood epic, Gone with the Wind, though less brutal in its racism, nevertheless perpetuated the stereotype of Reconstruction as a tragic era when a “prostrate South” was put to the heel by an unholy alliance of greedy carpetbaggers, sinister scalawags, and “uppity” blacks just released from slavery and raised far above their station. Griffith used dramatic images that were startlingly innovative for the time, but he also portrayed lascivious, half-civilized blacks taking over the South and subjecting it to a reign of violence, corruption, and incompetence until beleaguered white Southerners were at last “redeemed” by fearless Klansmen. Griffith, one of the founding geniuses of American cinema, released his blockbuster epic Birth of a Nation. ![]() The period following the Civil War, known as Reconstruction, has been especially ill-served by filmmakers. ![]() Ken Burns’s acclaimed series The Civil War featured a charismatic Shelby Foote spouting reactionary pro-Confederate mythology and gushing about Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Southern general who oversaw the massacre of black soldiers during the war and became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Drew, who was born free.Įven the most high-toned historical documentaries rarely satisfy scholars. From left to right, Lewis Martin, 100 Martha Elizabeth Banks, 104 Amy Ware, 103 and Reverend Simon P. A reunion of former slaves at the Cosmopolitan Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., 1917. ![]()
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