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Woodrow Wilson shhowed Birth of a Nation at the White House, and if I
remember correctly he said something to the efrfec that it manifested
central American principles. Now that is The Enemy speaking, and it is
worth while understanding that enemy. Studying the art (the best art) of
any culture, including especially the culture of The Enemy.
You need to attend to my metaphor of The Second American Republic. The
First Republic was a Slave Republic. That was destroyed in the Civil
War, after which their was a brief Interlude while, more or less
seriously, an effort was made to establish a Second Republic on the
basis of Bourgeois Equality (full citizenship) -- Reconstructioj.
Instead Northern Capitalists and Southern Planters made peace,
establishing a Second Republic on the basis of White Suppremacy, imposed
on the former slaves by the terror of the KKK. A Nation was Born! A New
Nation.
No one put it that way. The equal but separate decision of the Supreme
Court avoided the naked language of the Dred Scott decision. School
children could be taught the Declaration of Independence (All men are
created equal and so forth) and celebrate the Brotherhood of Man with no
sense of contradiction.
North as well as South, but less naked. The summer of 1944 when I was 14
I worked in a grocery store in the tiny village of Sodus, Michigan. It
had a lunchcounter attached. I remember the owner saying to the new
employee something to the effect that if any Blacks came in, to put too
much pepper on their hamburger. (Berrien County Michigan had a sizeable
Black population, and they would be in the countryside and villages
during the fruit harvesting season.) The N word was used plentifuuly in
my grandfater's home. He was a small fruit farmer and most of his berry
pickers were black. The word was called to my attention by constant
warnings not to use it in the berry-packing shed where the pickers might
overhear it. That bit of hypocrisy was perhaps the main difference
between North and South.
The scenes of riotous black legislators in Birth of a Nation _also_
appeard in the history books we used in elementary and high school.
Thadeus Stevens was a villain; the Impeachment of Johnson brutish
extremism; Robert E. Lee was a great man. Every year or two Congress
went through the charade of introducing legislation to ban lynching, and
politely allowed the Southern Senators to kill it with a fillibuster.
Part of Americanism like the World Series and Fourth of July fireworks
at the local football field. One Nation, individible, with liberyt and
justice for all. And some day in the distant future when the nation was
"ready" for it Negores would be included, so it was just as if they were
already inlcuded and we didn't have to worry about present reality. Oh
yes, and one of the 'educational' movies shown in my rural elementary
school was a romantic bit of sleaze on Custer's Last Stand.
Mark Twain had tried his best, and his best was very good, to
'celebrate' that Second Republic in "The United States of LYncherdom"
and "To the Person Sitting in Darkness." I read both of them in grad
school in the late '50s; I though they were wonderful and sort of
preened myself on thinking that. (I had also attacked racism in my
Salutatorian commencement address in Benton Harbor in 1947 -- The Second
American Republic was jammed full of good thoughts.) In 1963, just 18
months before various developments started me on the path to where I am
now politically, talking to anothe member of the English Department at
ISU, I said somethihg profoundly pompous about the growing Black
agitation in the South to the effect that they were morally correct, and
if they kept it up we woudl have to suport them, but they were really
moving too fast. ("How the Progressive Mind Works")
In other words, intelligent and well-intentoned peopld could life in the
midst of The Second American Reepublic and not see it for what it was.
Richard Wright's _Black Boy_ showed what it was for one individual. But
no one really generalized such things to represent The Soul of America!
It took someone
who not only believed the Myth but really thought it was Good to SHOW
that heart of the Second American Republic. No liberal covering. No
pussy-footing. America had achieved greatness andunity and brotherhood
thorugh the lynching of Black Rapists and driving the Savages from the
hallowed Legislative Halls of the South. All was well and the Presdient
of the United States (a highly intelligent professional historian) could
give his blessing to this celebratin of the Birth of the Nation.
Really, no radical could do as good a job as Griffiths did in showing
America for what it was. He put a plus sign on. We put a minus sign on
it.
The movements of the '60s did not achieve what we hoped they would; they
ran out of energy. But we did destroy the Second American Republic. The
Third is pretty slezy of course -- but who wants to return to the
Second. And to know that Second for what it was -- go watch Birth of a
Nation again.
Carrol
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