He screened Birth of a Nation in the White House. That film, along with Gone With the Wind, is responsible for pushing Lost Cause bullshit into popular culture.
Birth of a Nation is what inspired the formation of the Second Klan. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s gang had mostly cleared off by then, the 20’s were a revival.
The Second Klan was massive and mainstream. They fielded charity baseball games. Something like a third of white people in Indiana were members. It was normalized.
He’s largely responsible for writing that lost cause BS, of course he wanted to get it into popular culture. I still consider Wilson to tie Jackson for worst president so far.
He screened Birth of a Nation in the White House. That film, along with Gone With the Wind, is responsible for pushing Lost Cause bullshit into popular culture.
Birth of a Nation is what inspired the formation of the Second Klan. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s gang had mostly cleared off by then, the 20’s were a revival.
The Second Klan was massive and mainstream. They fielded charity baseball games. Something like a third of white people in Indiana were members. It was normalized.
People forget - those lynchings we read about? They’d let kids out of school to attend them. They’d take commemorative photographs.
Can you imagine? Living in a world where your teenage son could be brutalized, have his body mutilated, for the “crime” of maybe having whistled at a white woman?
Condemning the violence of the poem without understanding the context misses so much.
He’s largely responsible for writing that lost cause BS, of course he wanted to get it into popular culture. I still consider Wilson to tie Jackson for worst president so far.