Let us return to W.D. Griffith's Birth of A Nation: one of the racist movies of all time, as well as one of the biggest money makers in film history. Birth of A Nation was the slavery ideal come to life; and two families: the Cameron and the Stoneman were pivotal to its plot."Dr. Cameron and his sons are gently benevolent "fathers" to their childlike servants. The servants themselves could be no happier. In the fields they contentedly pick cotton. In the quarters they dance and sing for their master. In the big house Mammy joyously goes about her chores. All is in order. Everyone knows his place. Then the civil war breaks out and the old order cracks."Danny Bogel Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films 1973 p.12The war years are terrible! In the South there is [title card/Birth of a Nation]: "ruin, devastation, rapine and pillage!" Lions, and tigers and bears --oh my! Reconstruction begins and now a band of uppity Northern darkies and low life Yankee carpetbaggers enter the picture. They corrupt the former slaves -- who then turn on their good and loving masters.Who will save the South?Into this conflict, Griffith introduced Lillian Gish: as "Flora Cameron;" of the first -- if not the first Silver Screen virgins. As Flora Cameroon, Gish played a frail, blond teenager menaced by Griffith's next creation: "Gus," the "brutal, Black buck." Gus was the Southern nightmare of the Black rapist come to life. Of according to Southern mythology, the only reason Black men wanted freedom was so they could rape White women -- picking cotton 16 hours (and without pay) had nothing to do with it. Cast beside Gus, Flora became an icon: a blond symbol of virginity.Copyright Valjeanne Jeffers-Thompson 1997, 2009 all rights reserved
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