At the other end of the purity spectrum stood "Austin Stoneman:" abolitionist and all around bad guy. What's more he has a Black mistress: "Lydia Brown!" Stoneman's character was actually patterned to resemble Thaddeus Stevens, a true to life antislavery congressional leader and is he's thus depicted as: the leader who would force the South to grant blacks equal rights.Lydia as both his housekeeper and mistress is described as the "the weakness that is to blight a nation" (Leab, 1975 P.27).Too Black to pass for White, yet too White to live among her own kind, Lydia is the classic tragic mulatto and a powerful symbol. She is the femme fatale: the archetypal bitch who leaves death and destruction in her wake.Notice, readers if you will, her "male" characteristics: she is power hungry, aggressive and refuses to humble herself before White males. Throughout Birth of a Nationshe anguishes over her predicament as a Black woman in a hostile white world (Bogle, 1973; p.14).And Lydia is (drum roll if you please) sexual. No greater sin hath any woman. In fact, she is Birth of Nation's only passionate woman. Thus the myth of passion and sexuality as evil, as Original Sin, and of woman as its bearer was recreated on the Silver Screen....[Austin] determined to bring the South to its knees after itsdefeat is momentarily trapped by her Lydia's animalistic vibes...[She] "is his one weakness and the cause of his downfall (Bowser, p. 44)Juxtaposed between two polarities of Black and White stood Mammy: the asexual, Aunt Tomasina fiercely devoted to preserving the status quo. Griffith ever the demonic genius added another element to the Mammy configuration: Sapphire, a creature one part Mammy, one part Amazon; the Black woman who is an shrew in her relationship with Black men, the mythic ball buster and castrator of the Black male.Sapphire would become a full blown myth during the 1930s (Amos and Andy) to be reborn as the Black Matriarch of the 1960s.Whatever else Griffith was, he was a trend setter, and the molds he cast dominated the Silver Screen fordecades to come. For example in his portrayal of Mammy as dark skinned, he set the stage for the typecasting of darker Black women as unattractive well into the Civil Rights era.A dark black actress was considered for no role butthat of a mammy or aunt jemima. On the other hand, thepart-black woman -- the light skinned Negress -- wasgiven a chance at lead parts and graced with a modicumof sex appeal...In fact it was said in 1958 and 1970 thatthe reason why such actresses as Eartha Kitt in AnnaLucasta and Lola Falana in The Liberation of L.B. Jonesfailed to emerge as important screen love goddess wasthat they were too dark (Bogle, 1973; p.15).Copyright Valjeanne Jeffers 1997, 2009 all rights reserved
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