Though the NAACP had little success banning the film, in part because film boards were all white and in part because the film was a monster success, they did prompt a national discussion about the film’s racism. Reformer Jane Addams condemned the film as ahistorical and prejudiced, while President Woodrow Wilson, himself an ex-historian (if such a creature can be said to exist), believed the film “terribly true.”
Movies profiled in this book: