BIRTH OF A NATION AND THE LIMITS OF PROGRESSIVISM

Week Six

I. Birth of a Nation

Technological innovation

White supremacist themes

Birth of a Nation (1916)

II. Limits of progressivism

A. Democracy for the elites

Creating a virtuous electorate

Personal registration laws

Exclusion of southern African-Americans

City manager plans: from elected officials to experts

From 79% participation in 1896 to 49% in 1920

II. Limits of progressivism

B. Imposition of a white, middle-class, Protestant ethic

Anti-Catholicism

Reforming the slums

Social Class in America (1957)

II. Limits of progressivism

C. Social Darwinism William Graham Sumner: faith in

science leads to an application of “survival of the fittest” principle to humans

Eugenics: selective contraception, sterilization, euthanasia, anti-miscegenation laws

1894: Castrations inflicted on male inmates of Kansas State Asylum for Idiotic and Imbecilic Youth

1898: Eugenic sterilization bill introduced Michigan state legislature, to authorize castration of all inmates

of Michigan Home for the Feeble Minded and Epileptic and felons convicted of third offense.

1898: Massachusetts castrates 24 male children for, among other deviant behaviors, "persistent

epilepsy and weakness of mind."

1900: Marriage prohibited for alcoholics, "the insane," and people with tuberculosis by State of North Dakota.

1915: Dr. Harry Haiselden kills disabled newborn "Baby Bollinger" at Chicago's

German- American Hospital

1918: New York State sterilization law declared unconstitutional.

1924 : Virginia legislature passes sterilization law

Carrie and Emma Buck at the

Virginia Colony for Epileptics

and Feebleminded, Lynchburg, VA

circa 1924.

1927: Buck v. Bell, U.S. Supreme Court upholds Virginia's sterilization statute

1931: Sterilization statues have been enacted in 27 U.S. states.

A poster from a 1921 eugenics conference proudly displayed which U.S. states had by then implemented sterilization legislation.

Nazi German euthanasia program publicly condemned

August 3, 1941, by Catholic Bishop

Clemens von Galen in sermon, labeling it “plain murder.”

1953: Irradiated milk fed to orphans; irradiating the

testicles of prisoners;

irradiating the heads of the

mentally disabled

1965: U.S. Congress reverses immigration policies restricting admission of families with “feeble-minded”

members.

II. Limits of progressivism

D. White supremacy Northern racism and

sundown towns

Southern racism and the Lost Cause

III. Birth of a Nation

A. Themes of the Lost Cause 1. Heralding the courage of the South

2. Claiming direct lineage to the American Revolution

The revolution of 1861 was the continuation of the revolution of 1776

3. Skewering the North

Unfeeling, crass industrialism of the North crushed the pure agrarianism of the South

Reconstruction was an era of carpetbaggers, corruption and victimization of the South (Dunning School)

4. Promoting the image of slavery as a benign institution “never was there a happier dependence of labor and capital” Slaves “enlightened by the rays of Christianity”

III. Birth of a Nation

How did Birth of a Nation portray . . .

North

South

Slavery

Reconstruction

III. Birth of a Nation

III. Birth of a Nation

III. Birth of a Nation

III. Birth of a Nation

III. Birth of a Nation

III. Birth of a Nation