Griffith and Micheaux

The movie "Birth of a Nation" by D. W. Griffith is a movie about slavery and the freedom of african Americans before and after the civil ar. The story focuses mainly around 2 families who are from the north and south and how they handle the war and subsequent reconstruction phase of the south after the civil war. The movie is overall very racist, frequently depicting African Americans as the antagonist, while white individuals are given the role as the victim and are justified in their discrimination throughout.

The film "Within Our Gates" by Oscar Micheaux is a film made a few years after the previous mentioned one. The story follows a young African American woman who is trying to raise money for a school for her race.  It portrays racial violence at the hands of white individuals in the form of lynching and beatings and overall unequalness along with demonstrating people's prejudices.

Both fo these films deal with racism and discrimination quite a bit, but both of them take very different angles on the situation. In the case of birth of a Nation, white people are seen as the victim's of freed black people's oppression and depicts black individuals as uneducated and simple minded. On the other hand, Within our Gates" shows the mistreatment of black people after the civil war at the hands of white people and shows black people striving to better themselves.

The NAACP did their best to get birth of a Nation censored nationwide, but only met with marginal success from what I'e read. One article seems to portray its censoring as a big threat to the film, while another seems to almost all but dismiss it as a footnote. I find it difficult to say which is true, but after reading all the material and seeing the film myself, I can surmise that they did at least have some success in getting the film either censored or edited in some locations, and it most likely laid a more solid foundation for getting other films censored afterwards.