The protests over the last few days in Baltimore are the latest in a long tradition of demonstrations on the streets of American cities. In fact, 100 years ago, the African-American community here in Boston were organizing and turning out in mass to make their voices heard.
On the last Sunday in April, a century ago, voices of protest rose up in churches throughout the Boston area, including at the Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, where some 800 black women assembled, to hear speakers like Dr. Alice McKane.
"Shall we fight for existence, or shall we not exist because we are black?" McKane said at the time. "I say fight, fight to the bitter end; fight until the last drop of blood is gone."
That fight was over a groundbreaking new “picture play” by director D.W. Griffith. A near-three-hour silent-film epic about the Civil War and Reconstruction South, called "Birth of a Nation."
"Everyone was in awe of the technology," said Dick Lehr, author of the book "The Birth of A Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil War." "He did a master shot, moved the cameras and did close ups, point of views, and then he cut all this stuff to maximize the viewing experience, so people were blown away."
Well … not everyone. For all of its spectacle, the film — especially the second half — was also categorically racist. Blacks were depicted as violent and savage, the Klu Klux Klan as heroes and saviors. Consider the scene described by Dennis Greene, a law professor at the University of Dayton who spent years in the film industry, showing black state legislators during Reconstruction.
"Sitting in the state legislature, barefoot and drinking wine and eating chicken, it’s just disgraceful and defamatory in the most significant way possible," Greene said.
Despite this, "Birth of a Nation" had opened to mostly stellar reviews — and some controversy — in Los Angeles and New York prior to its Boston debut in April. But Lehr points out that its ultimate success or failure hinged on its reception in our City on a Hill.
"Griffith and the producers knew that given Boston’s antislavery history and the emancipation movement before the war, they viewed Boston as an obstacle and their line was, ‘If we can get the show through Boston, we can play it anywhere,’" he said.
But they faced a fierce fight from the African-American community here, led by journalist Monroe Trotter and a fairly new organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They appealed to then-mayor James Michael Curly to ban it. Curly screened the movie and did admit that a few of scenes might have gone a bit too far.
"He suggested to Griffith that he voluntarily tweak them and Griffith of course said he did, but he didn’t, and other than that, Curly said the show can go on," Lehr said.
A week after the "Birth of A Nation" opening at the Tremont Theatre on Tremont Street street, Trotter and others took the protest to the streets.
"Trotter and seven or eight other people are arrested that night in the lobby of the theater," Lehr said. "And it was a night full of tension, conflict, fights here and there. So that was an intense moment."
The lobbying of the legislature, marches on the statehouse, and protest rallies in in churches and halls went on for months. But the film continued its run and opened in more cities across the country. Greene says the film’s runaway success was a huge blow for African Americans.
"It really had a definitive effect upon people’s perception of African Americans in some cases," Lehr said. "It had an incredibly defamatory — I mean its ludicrous when you see it today, but at the time it was really a devastating thing."
And for decades to come, as Lehr experienced firsthand when, as a young journalist, he infiltrated a Ku Klux Klan meeting led by David Duke for a story.
"His idea of a meeting was to screen "Birth of a Nation" — and it's a silent film — so then he accompanied it with his extremely racist narration," Lehr said. "So I understood that night not necessarily its cinematic value, but its propaganda value."
But both Greene and Lehr say that for all the damage done by the film, the protests that "Birth of a Nation" inspired were a crucial rallying at a critical time for a bourgeoning civil right movement in America.
"The protests were very, very effective in terms of giving people a sense of challenging artistic imagery coming from on high," Greene said.
"Protesting this film had a great unifying force; You had several thousand protesters marching on the State House and I would be scratching my head going, 'What year is this?'" Lehr said. "This is so 1960s-ish, and that’s the kind of thing I think people generally don’t realize at all."
The fight to ban "Birth of a Nation" — a battle lost here, but one that helped stoke a nascent war for civil rights that still continues today. And we were in the thick of it, right here in Boston, 100 years ago this week.
And you have a tale of forgotten Massachusetts history to share, or there's something you're just plain curious about, email Edgar at curiositydesk@wgbh.org. He might just look into it for you.
