In the movie Birth of a Nation, the first half of the story is based off the Civil War, it begins to explain the beginning of slavery, and after the introduction to slavery the story starts to introduce the Southern Camerans and Northern Stoneman. Birth of a Nation is told from the perspectives of two families, the nation is torn apart, and slaves are blamed for this complication. In the second half of the movie, racism grows even stronger. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and Reconstruction is introduced in the second half. Birth of a Nation was based on racism, and white Americans painted their faces black to portray African American characters. There were no African American actors, because at this time blacks were not allowed to be actors. If there were any black actors, they were either extras, and or in the background picking cotton. African Americans in the movie, we're not portrayed in a positive light. Blacks worked long shifts on huge plantation farms, and their clothing were not as fancy as the white people, in the movie. The clothes African Americans wore had very poor quality, while white people in the movie had fancy clothing. African American men were portrayed as sexual predators towards white women, and the …show more content…
In one scene a young white lady commits suicide, because she was rather die than have a black male try and rape her. She the a jumps off a cliff, ending her life. The man who chased after the white woman was hunted down, and killed by the Ku Klux Klan. That scene was extremely significant because it showed how aggressive whites were towards African Americans, and the Ku Klux Klan is also portrayed as heroic in that specific scene. “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect the Southern