An NAACP Official Calls for Censorship of The Birth of a Nation"The Birth of a Nation, which opened in March 1915, was simultaneously a landmark in the history of American cinema and a landmark in American racism. The film depicted the South, following the assassination of President Lincoln, as ruled by rapacious African Americans, who by the film’s end were heroically overthrown from power by the Ku Klux Klan. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to mount boycott of the film, but it failed to stir significant white opposition. The NAACP changed its tactics; this April 17, 1915, letter from NAACP national secretary Mary Childs Nerney described the organization’s efforts, largely in vain, to get local film censors to remove particularly racist scenes. The NAACP’s ongoing national campaign to censor the film produced decidedly mixed results. Despite success in Boston and Chicago in securing several minor cuts in the film’s release print, by year’s end distributors could show The Birth of a Nation almost anywhere in the country." GMU History Matters