Abstract
On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of Nation (then under its original title, The Clansman) premiered at Clunes Auditorium in Los Angeles, with a full symphony orchestra playing live musical accompaniment. It soon became a nationwide sensation: a cinematic milestone that established the narrative feature film as the flagship product of Hollywood cinema. Its depiction of African-Americans also exposed — in the most visceral and vivid way — the raw symptoms of a peculiarly American pathology. For the last century, for better but mostly for worse, its impact has rippled through the currents of American culture.