OLD PURPOSE, "NEW BODY": "THE BIRTH OF A NATION" AND THE REVIVAL OF THE KU KLUX KLAN
When a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan first arrived in Butte, Montana, in the summer of 1921, he placed an ad in the Butte Miner depicting a white-robed man astride a bucking horse. Borrowed from the publicity materials for D W. Griffith's groundbreaking film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), this...
Saved in:
| Published in: | The journal of the gilded age and progressive era 2015-10, Vol.14 (4), p.616-620 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | When a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan first arrived in Butte, Montana, in the summer of 1921, he placed an ad in the
Butte Miner
depicting a white-robed man astride a bucking horse. Borrowed from the publicity materials for D W. Griffith's groundbreaking film,
The Birth of a Nation
(1915), this image of a uniformed figure was a fixture of Klan propaganda. The advertisement faced two directions: it connected the newly formed Klan with its Reconstruction Era predecessor, while also demonstrating that the Klan imagined itself through the revisionist lens of Griffith's film and its textual inspiration, Thomas Dixon Jr.'s play and novel
The Clansman
(1905). The image of a white-robed Klansmen in the
Butte Miner
was thus a symbol of what Klan leaders and the popular media alike called the Klan's “revival,” the process through which the historical organization was brought to life in a new form. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1537-7814 1943-3557 |