In this video from The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, learn about the film The Birth of a Nation. This 1915 silent film was adapted from the novel The Clansman, which dramatized southern life in the period of Reconstruction. The story presents Ku Klux Klan members as noble men and vilifies southern black men as sexual predators of white women. While the N.A.A.C.P. tried desperately to have the film banned, it was to no avail. After the film's release, rampant white violence against black men spread across the South.