Birth of a Nation, 1915

Birth of a Nation, 1915

Birth of a Nation, 1915

Blank Advice sheet for The Birth of a Nation, 1915. (Gilder Lehrman Collection)This "Advice Sheet" flyer was distributed with D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation to theaters when the film was released in 1915. Significantly, the distributors are adamant that "NEGROES MUST NOT BE ADMITTED . . . under any circumstance." The film was a treatment of a novel and play, The Clansman, which depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and African Americans as villains during Reconstruction. The deeply racist film attracted a wide audience and stirred controversy and protests from the newly created NAACP.

A full transcript is available.