“In February 1915, Thomas Dixon, author of popular novel The Clansman, and D.W. Griffith, the director who adapted the book into the film Birth of a Nation, lobbied then-president Woodrow Wilson for a screening at the White House. The two were sure their story would get a warm reception from the ‘well documented racist’ and onetime scholar who produced a five-volume History of the American People, in which he portrayed the South as ‘overrun by ex-slaves who were undeserving of freedom,’ as Boston University journalism professor Dick Lehr remarks. ... The moment was pivotal for the birth of the Civil Rights movement, he argues in a recent book. Following the country’s entry into World War I, it also lit the fires of what novelist, composer and executive director of the NAACP James Weldon Johnson called ‘Red Summer’… a summer of lynchings, lootings, burnings, shootings and other violence. ...”
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