A Note On Slavery and the Decision to Remove Lillian Gish’s Name by Bowling Green University’s Theatre

By

R.E. Prindle

 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/12/gish-j12.html?fbclid=IwAR3xSq7_9y_kBJMZ-Bwmb96TE_nieFLbAz9M-BDK5_sX0p9-itHWe7lKaQU

 

 

According to the article linked above Bowling Green University has discriminated against its alumna the great actress Lillian Gish by erasing her name from the campus theatre honoring her because some Black students objected to her appearance in D.W. Griffith’s great movie The Birth of a Nation for racist reasons.  The movie was one of the greatest cinematic achievements.  It dealt with the period of American history known as Reconstuction.  That period has been one of the most, if not the most, distorted periods in US history.

Reconstruction began when President Abraham Lincoln was murdered by Abolitionist fanatics because he wouldn’t treat Southern Whites as subhumans and submit them to subhuman and barbaric measures.  Instead he wished to treat the war as a misunderstanding and wished to reintegrate the South into the Union which he had so ardently and with so much bloodshed wished to preserve.

Having removed the President the fanatics did impose draconian measures on the Southern Whites which elevated the Blacks over them essentially making the Whites slaves and putting the Blacks’ foot on their neck.  This situation would have continued well beyond 1877 but for the reestablishment of sanity by President Hayes.

The criminal period of Reconstruction was well remembered by Southern Whites.  The most prominent voice of the Southern view of this history was the novelist Thomas W. Dixon Jr..  Today the Left and David Walsh, the writer of this article, condemn Dixon as a terrible racist.  For the Left the term racist is a catch all for anyone of whom they disapprove much like the old Conservative catch all, Communist.  The term racist should be treated by all reasonable people the same way.

Dixon was not a racist, he was a competent writer and capable historian.  He was an ardent anti-Communist after the 1917 Revolution when US Commies began the attacks to discredit all writers who refused to follow the Party line.  Twenty years of defamation later Thomas Dixon’s reputation was destroyed.

Hodding Carter in his history of Reconstruction of 1959 titled it The Angry Scar. And so it was and is.  Reconstruction did not end in 1877 it was merely interrupted.  It re-emerged after 1954 and the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. The Board of Education and continues ferociously today.

The movie Birth of a Nation was an attempt to heal that Angry Scar.  It attempted to present the real, the true, story of Reconstruction and the real reason for the creation of the first Ku Klux Klan.

There are those who, for whatever reason, wish to distort that history and complete the destruction of Southern Whites and, indeed, Conservatives in general, who they see as sub-human, that President Lincoln wished to prevent.  These people are now known as the Lunatic Left.  They are a racist bunch favoring Black Supremacy.

Thus, their condemnation of Lillian Gish on the insane charge that she accepted a role in the movie and then subsequently did not condemn it or Thomas Dixon, David Wark Griffith and The Birth of a Nation.  There is nothing to condemn in any of the three.  There is much to condemn in Communism and Communists and anyone who speaks well of it and them.

While we can never put the past behind us it is important to maintain a balanced view of what our ancestors endured to the best of their abilities.  Yes, slavery is a terrible thing, then and now, and the attitude is resurfacing on the Left.

Agricultural slavery which not only Negroes endured but also Whites, both worked cheek by jowl in the fields in the early days of Negro importations, was benign and even beneficial compared to the industrial slavery endured by workers in the North.

In addition, there was no slavery more horrid than that endured by English mine workers in nineteenth century England.  Yes, we should and must condemn slavery and curse the legacy not only of agricultural slavery but industrial slavery in all forms, whether endured by the Black race, the White race or any other race.