HW 4/14

The birth of a nation is a 1915 movie directed and produced by Griffith. It involves two families from the Mason Dixon line who became friends after their sons went to the same school. One of the families was the Stonemans family that lived in Washington and owned a rural farm near Pennsylvania. Austin Stoneman was the head of this family and also was an abolitionist politician. He had three children, namely Elsie, Phil, and Tod. The other family was the Camerons and are regarded in the movie as the southern family. They owned a vast plantation in piedmont South Carolina. The movie was directed to persuade the whites that the blacks or Negroes were the resultant of the American problems. He uses several methods to convince his fellow whites, including the use of music, color, and black depiction of some characters in the movie. It revolves around the Camerons and how they were affected by the civil war. They blame the civil war and the introduction of Africans to America as the beginning of the problems they encountered in the south.