Birth of a Klavern
In 1905, The Country Life Press published The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Dixon. Ten years later, D. W. Griffith transformed Dixon's white supremacist novel into the first major American film: Birth of a Nation. Premiered Jan 1-2, 1915 Loring Opera Houst in Riverside, CA as "The Clansman" Griffith copyrighted The Birth of a Nation in 1905 but did not use it until March 1915.
The Birth of a Nation
After a White House screening of the film in February 1915, President Woodrow Wilson commented that the two-act wonder was "like writing history with lightning." Griffith's Redemption masterpiece "The Birth of a Nation" was the first film screened at the White House in US History.
While the people of Denton County were introduced to the idea of a Ku Klux Klan through Birth of a Nation, the first masked crusaders were imitated in nearby Fort Worth three months before Denton’s first screening of the film. The Fort Worth Klan began at the request of Fort Worth City Commissioner Jamieson. He asked the Chief of Police Chollar to “organize a Ku Klux Klan to head the fall festival parade” on October 12, 1916. Because the establishment of an official Klavern required a paid membership of ten dollars by 100 members and a charter from the Klan’s Atlanta Headquarters, it would be four years before these roots stoked into a fully operating organization.
Unlike modern films with nationwide screening on the same weekend, films in the 1910s tooks months and sometimes years to reach as far as Denton. The first screening of Birth of a Nation was at Texas Woman's University in January 1917. Making the trip to witness Griffith's spectacle was a social status boost, often listed in the socialite section of the Denton Record-Chonricle.
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