A Geek History of Time - Episode 375 - Birth of a Nation as a Horror Film with Dr. Donald Guillory Part I

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

They mean it is 2 o'clock in the fucking morning where I am. The 1848ers were so much more radical than what we're comfortable or familiar with. The layer, the layer of sarcasm involved in that entire delivery is, like I've seen, I've seen, yeah, it's not even frosting. But he failed, so fuck them buddies. Now after World War II ended, Lockley started mapping out foot trails for the newly created. Oh, God, Pembroke Shire. So Pembrokeshire. Pembrokeshire.

Okay. Pembrokeshire. Just please let me just read Latin all day. We're way into the 19th century now. I'm sorry. Well, Damien. It's 3 o'clock in the fucking morning. My name is Ed Blaylock.

I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California. And I think I've mentioned in the previous episodes that my son has gotten into baseball recently. And earlier this week, my wife and I were talking. And we were watching one of his games. And my wife said, you know, should he be wearing a cup? And I said, you know, I don't know. I don't know what the recommended age for that is because he's eight.

And we looked it out. We found out, yes, as a matter of fact, he should be. So my wife ordered him one. And it arrived via Amazon because everything does. And she handed the package to me that afternoon and said, it's your job to explain to him how this works. Oh, okay. And so I said, hey, kiddo, come here.

And I showed it to him and I explained it to him. And I was not prepared for the out wearing an athletic protective guard. Um, it was, it was, he, he could not wait to put it on. Uh, he did kind of complain about, you know, it'd been kind of uncomfortable to move around it. And I said, you just got to learn how to wear it. And yeah, uh, so then in his game the following day, um, you could see him standing there, uh, at shortstop, uh, knocking himself in the crotch.

Yeah. Um, because, yeah. So, yeah, that's, that's, that's what we've had going on. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a U.S. history and government teacher up here in Northern California. I have just one quick brag about the other project that I have tattooed on my arm besides this podcast. Right.

My pun show played at an art theater or an art museum, actually. And we had the balcony and the bottom lobby area completely full of people chanting, spin that wheel. spin that wheel she spun that wheel so that was cool so much so that we are now going to be a part of a huge

what's the word charity giveaway for our town for Sacramento the big day of giving and we need to run a 20 minute version of our show now by the time this airs we have already done it but my first thought was

oh what do I print for the winner of this one so I'm currently printing a crown that will have the words capital punishment, big day of giving all around it. And the other bit of news. I like that. My daughter sat down across from me. I was in the kitchen taking care of business. She sat down and she points to a spider.

And she's like, has that been there? I'm like, well, no. He's normally been in the corner. And she's like, well, how long? I said, about three or four months. And she looks at me. And she's like, we keep spiders in the kitchen. I'm like, well, yeah, they keep the kitchen tidy.

So. Yeah, well. Yeah. So that would not have been tolerated by my wife in this house. Yeah, no. His name is Bailey. Okay. He has a favorite liqueur.

So, but yeah. Anyway. So I would like to take this moment now to point out that we have a guest with us, Dr. Don Guillory. and Dr. Guillory, Don, please feel free to introduce yourself. Oh, I'm Don Guillory, Dr. G., to my students and my followers. I am a historian of U.S. and Latin America history focusing on 19th and 20th century, special emphasis on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and identity.

And as I tell my students, when I do the introduction on the first day of class, which is I get to see all the cool stuff in the archive. I get to see like all the interesting stuff. I get to interview interesting people, go to interesting sites. And it helps, at least for at least my ideas, it helps them to better understand history as not being wrote memorization. It's the stuff that's around them. It's the stuff that they, you know, are surrounded by.

But I'm also an author. former co-host of a podcast that we finally buried a few years ago, the necronomid.com, where we talked about horror films and the social commentary that was there in them. I've got a few books out. We can talk about those later.

But I am a huge fan of pop culture, gaming, wrestling. I mean, right now we're recording this on WrestleMania weekend. Yep. And the fans are not happy with night one just like last year. Yeah. Yeah. So let me add a little cornstarch to the terriaki sauce here real quick.

He says he's an author of a few books. He has written Abyss of Nightmares Volume 1, which is a collection of young adult horror stories from ages like 7 to 18. Magnolia Lane, which is a southern ghost story. It's kind of an historical fiction with a ghostly psychopomp that takes you through the history of southern plantations. Bastards of the bio A mix Kind of a Southern police thriller It honestly kind of reminded me of Southern Twin Peaks

Okay You know the gross underbelly And the lost slave narrative of David Booker Which was published this year Historical fiction That is what it's basically what it says on the 10 It's a first person narrative Of a man who endured slavery

And its abolition and how to thrive In a world afterwards And then there's also the book. Let me cut you off on that. I didn't mean this. But that book, this is just for your listeners. Okay. For your listeners.

All right, both you folks, listen up. I was very angry when I wrote that book. I was very angry about a certain liquid that gets solid when it's frozen. And I decided to take some research that I had been doing about slavery and about family members. And basically wrote the same story. as far as what people were experiencing during slavery and actor, as well as what people are experienced as far as the terrorizing of their neighborhoods through this. Okay.

So that's for your listeners. They got the inside track. Anybody else who reads it, they're going to be like, oh, it's about this. I'm like, no, it's about ICE going after families. Yeah. It reminded me, actually, of there was a book that a friend of mine gave me, and he gave me two books at the same time. One was about the Dust Bowl, and it wasn't that one.

The other one was about, it kind of, it kind of seemed to pair with 12 years a slave, but it wasn't that. It was about a black family who owned property, and then the husband was kidnapped and sold into slavery. I was going to say, I don't know that book, but I know there are a bunch, well, I shouldn't say a bunch. There are a good number of stories similar to that. In fact, we have, gosh, now I forgot his name, but he's known as the Natchez Prince or the Prince of Slaves or something like that. I forget the different names that they gave, but it was an African who was, as most enslaved people were,

an African who was kidnapped and brought to the United States. And then I guess it's not the United States at the time, but it was Natchez, Mississippi, or these Natchez in Mississippi. He is held in bondage and his owner notices that something's odd about him because all, sorry, not all the other slaves, but a good number of the other enslaved people would only listen to him. It didn't matter who else was telling them what was going to do. He was the one. And this individual found, as far as a slaveholder, found out that this was an African prince or African royalty and emancipated him because he felt, oh, my God, I, slavery is not bad. I it's just that I enslaved someone who was royal.

I enslaved above my station. Yeah. So let's go ahead and send him back to, back to Africa so he can be back there. He ends up not making it. He dies and passes it. But yeah, there are a lot of stories like that. And I can't remember his name off the top of my head. But sorry, go ahead.

So this one, while you said that, it twigged my memory. It was called The Known World by Edward P. Jones. Okay. out around 2002-2003. And it's, anyway, the vibe of the description of what you just said and known world both kind of were on the same frequency for me. And then you wrote another book called The Token Black Guide. This is the one for which you are named on TikTok.

Yes. There was no single explanation that was less vanilla than all the. rest in how, I mean, they were just so vague. It was like a student clearly not reading the assignment. Could you please tell us what Token Black Guide is about? Oh, yeah. Again, I think the first work and the latest work that I did as far as Token, Black Guide and David Booker, his narrative, they both came from a place of frustration.

Because in 2016, and this is really why I started writing the book, I had a class, I think 2012 or 2013. One of those, you know, professional development classes, continuing, whatever. Right. Continuing adult education things. So it's a creative writing course. And one of the assignments, I guess, was to build a portfolio. And one of the assignments that was part of the portfolio was, you know, writing a letter to your former self or someone that you would want them to know something. And I decided if I didn't have a child at that moment, but it was that, moment of I'm going to write this to myself. When I did have, when my wife and I did have our child in 2014, that I started thinking,

how am I going to prepare my kid for the world? And it can't just be me thinking about how I'm going to prepare my kid because there are other people who don't know these things. And you get a few of the books that happen to be sent out by the major publishers as the one that, hey, here's the one that you need to read, you know, as far as nothing against these authors, but, you know, white fragility. or, oh my gosh, but at the root or even cast or...

Right. Or why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? Yeah, you have those books that are going to talk about it historically, but also talk about it from a sociologic perspective. But in a lot of cases, the books are so thick. And what people are looking for is things that they can relate more to, as opposed to, I guess, an instruction manual. Even though I do call the guy.

But what happened after that was, which really started, was the trial of Trayvon Martin. And I say the trial of Trayvon Martin because the press as well as the court prosecution, it seemed as though it wasn't George Zimmerman who was on trial. It was Trayvon. Because it was always, well, why was he there? Well, if he had done this, if he'd done this, if he'd done this. And my response was if the guy didn't just get out of his car because he had an attitude. Right. Nothing would have happened that night.

Yeah. Nothing would have happened. Yeah. But it revealed to me how much people did not understand about at least the history of race in this country or the experience of people of marginalized people, whether it's racism, homophobia, transphobia, whatever, of what those individuals go through. Because even today, to take it from 2015 when I started it, even today we have legislators who are openly practicing. not just homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and sometimes just very veiled racism because they understand as long as I don't say the N-word, nobody's going to get really upset. But if I say thugs and all these other things, it's fine.

Yeah, I got a little foghorn. Yeah, because our governor, you know, Tate Reeves, God, he was doing something about the United Kingdom. You said, oh, you know, if United Kingdom were added to America, it would be the, it would be the 50th state. And it would only elevate above Mississippi. And his response to that mean was, he's like, well, that's the problem here is in Mississippi, we say, God bless you. And in London, they say, al-Aqbar. And I'm like, this is the governor of the state. Wow.

Posting this on social media. Or as I refer to him, which I'm never going to shy away from this, I refer to him as Jim Crow, Peter Griffin. because he looks like Peter Griffin and he says all the same stuff that that character says, but he says it unironically. He says it, this is who he is.

So when I wrote the book, to go back to 2014, 2015, the court case was taking place and my mom, I've seen my mom defeated a few times. This is the one moment where I was, I honestly felt like she was going to give up on anything

and everything. Because her reaction, action to the verdict was, we can't ever get justice. It is a short version of what she said. And she looked at and said, it is a clear cut case. This man went and attacked this child. Or if he didn't attack him, he was getting his ass kicked in response from the child and decided, I'm going to pull a gun out on this child. And that has roots as far as that type of violence or that excuse of violence goes back to, goes back to Emmett Till.

It goes back to what's presented in this film as well, in birth of a nation. This idea that you have to control this part of the population, you have to control their movement. You have to control their actions. You have to control who they have intercourse with because that movie's central focus is over the paranoia that your sister, your daughter, your cousin, whoever,

is going to marry a black person. That is the main problem in the movie. And so when we talk about it being, not to skip ahead too much, when we talk about it being a horror movie, that is essentially what it is. You're showing what a white segregationist perspective on the world is, oh my God, the world is changing.

I don't like it. Let me pass these laws. Or let's just go ahead and have vigilante action to stop it. And you see the same thing today where you have legislators, not just the governor here, but we have governor, well, I'm sorry, not just governors, but you have governors, state senators, senator, U.S. senators and U.S. representatives that are saying all the same stuff. And there are people like us who will work in the field of history that go and say,

how do you not know they're just repeating the same nonsense? Yeah. Over and over again, every generation. It's one generation's communism. And then it's, you know, everything that you don't like is now. communist. Right. Now anything that you don't like is, is, I don't know, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's just ridiculous at this point. Yeah. But, you know, we're the ones who are deranged. Sure. So, okay, that's way better than what Amazon said about your book. So it's because I keep telling people

to go buy it somewhere else than buy it. Well, evidently, everybody, uh, dials into what Amazon and just copy paste it. It is, again, I invite you to go and just shake your head at the sentence and a half of this says nothing description of the book. So Dr. G. Dr. Gilleri got his bachelor's and master's at Georgia Southern University, got his master's of education and curriculum and instruction, and his master's of liberal studies at ASU. And then he got his PhD in history with his dissertation, Black Oasis in a Hostel Desert, African Americans in the Making of Race and Place in Phoenix, Arizona, 1890 to 1970. Holy shit.

That's my edition. That's not part of it. From the University of Mississippi, which sought to and seemingly succeeded at, considering you got your PhD at this, shedding light on the importance of preserving and celebrating the stories and heritage of the black community in South Phoenix. And that's actually where I found you was on my for you page on TikTok. I saw a man getting his PhD via Zoom. And I believe this year 2004.

You saw the cool reveal. Yeah, I love watching. I love looking at people's wedding photos. And I love watching people getting a higher ed degree, whether it's a master's or a bachelor's, because the other ones are just so corporatized. And so like, you're all supposed to dress the same. But you are sitting there and they're telling you that you've passed. And you're kind of waiting for a key word from them.

And they tell you that you successfully defended your dissertation. And you're tearing up because the relief. And you wait until they called you doctor. And at that point, Ed, he reaches off camera, pulls out a championship belt and puts it on his shoulder. And I was like, well, that's a follow. Yeah. And then he owned your followership forever.

Yes. Yeah. I'm like a PhD in history who loves professional wrestling. Oh, okay. No problem. Initially, I did plan when I went years ago when I said, I'm going to get my doctorate one day. I'm going to do a doctorate in the history of pro wrestling. It's me too.

And I'm just like, but no, what's wild is I watch somebody, not to derail it and talk about pro wrestling, but I watch somebody like CM Punk or Chris Van Fleet talk about it. And I'm like, you guys need to go ahead and write this because you know everything and how everything is connected. Yeah. I would love to see like one of them just say, I'm going to write about the territory wars. I'm going to write about this. I'm going to write about, you know, I don't know, the gender dynamics during the attitude era. Jesus Christ.

Okay, stop it because that's literally what I was saying that I was going to get my PhD in was. the presentation of queer characters as heels while queer wrestlers remained faces. And I was going to kind of compare Paterson's career to gold dust

specifically. Speaking of the attitude era and gender dynamics. So, yeah, okay. Or the fact that Vince decided, oh, Chris Canyon is gay, or sorry, Chris Canyon is bisexual. So we're going to have the Undertaker go out there and beat the hell out of them.

Yes, and almost literally bury him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, which you dig a little deeper in Vince McMahon. God, who is it? He was talking to, it wasn't Rico.

It might have been Billy, uh, where he was talking to him. He's like, yeah, we're going to have you play these characters that are gay, but not gay and all this. Right. And this is when they were featuring hot lesbian action as a part of Smackdown. God, I forgot about it. Jesus. I didn't. And so he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he,

the guy's like, so you want me to play gay? And Vince says, let me tell you about my first homosexual experience, pal. And it's just like, this man is Philip the second. I swear to God. Well, you also have to ask with Vince, you're like, was it consensual? Right. Because that's the question I want to ask about him with any. I don't want to spend any time with him.

But that's definitely a question I would ask him if I were reporting. order. I'm sorry, if I were working and had the ability to say that to him, as opposed to, you know, my livelihood depends on that. That would be like that last question that Robert Carrow asked Robert Moses, you know, the one like, oh, and this interview is over. Damn it. Yeah. I thought I'd gotten it right. Um, so anyway, uh, gushing over you this way. Uh, tonight, you're here to talk to us about something that I've always been interested in that's not wrestling for once. And that is the use of film to reinforce society's anxieties through, uh, horror. This time, instead of possession movies like we've talked about before or zombie films like I talked about for way too long

we're going to talk about the racist matrix of its time birth of a nation but through the lens of it being a horror film and and before we get into that I just want to point out you gave a TED talk on the importance of narrative about six years ago oh my god you did I told you uh and he sent me the link it's a matter of fact like so not only did he give a TED talk it was February of 2020. So it's right before COVID hits. We shut down that Monday. Yeah.

So first off, I just want to, and that's where you also mentioned your mom feeling defeated. And her words in that TED talk were, we don't matter, which I found so poignant considering that in in Ferguson. Right. And then several other killings. And that led to Dallas and New Orleans. I want to say. And so the Black Lives Matter and then the Blue Lives Matter and on and on.

So just to hear her saying those words and to know that she was in that audience for you. Oh, yeah. She, yeah, it was a moment. Yeah. She is not an emotional person. Like I can count on one hand. How many times I've seen her cry or get upset?

Like where I've seen it. Obviously she's, you know, not done it around me, but like she teared up and I did not look for her because I knew she didn't one, she didn't know some of the stuff I was going to say but then two, I knew she was going to tear up.

I'm like, if I look at her, I'm done. The TED talk is over if I see her. Because it's one of those things where we have had, we've built up a relationship as far as my mother and I where if she says something is like the, the,

the grass is green, but I'm looking at it. I'm, it's blue. I'm like, I'm going to go out there and turn it green because there's no reason why she would be making this up. Right. And I mean,

as far as like, as far as I'm going to be delusional. What I mean is we built up such a solid foundation where I'm, when she said that at the age where I was, it meant something. If this had been me when I was 13, because I can pinpoint 13 of me being a jerk. Sure.

This was me at 13. either one of my parents had said that I would have not paid attention on what they said. I wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have given a second of thought. But she said that I'm glad to remind me the exact work because I've tried to like forget. I mean, I'm not that you brought it back. But it's one of those things where you had those moments. I want to say, I want that moment to stay in that moment. Well, for those types of moments. So when I saw her say that, I'm sorry, when I was watching her reaction and heard her say that, that was the moment where it's like,

I need to do something. And that goes back to the book, which is, I need to write about this. I need to get this out because there are things that I'm still seeing that were a problem 30 years ago. At that point, 20 years ago for me. And, you know, it was simple things. Like I could have, and this is something that really angered me about the way that people responded to Obama's reaction to it, which was he was saying it as a father. He said, this could have been my son. He's saying nothing, nothing, anything different from anyone else.

But what I heard from people I worked with and people I thought were safe people to be around, why does Obama have to make it about race? Like he didn't say anything other than this is, you know, it impacts me because I think about this could have been my son. It could have been me, you know, and even those conversations that those individuals who were, you know, bashing Obama over were. I was over with, didn't consider that you have women, as far as black women, that when they are going to the ultrasound, you still have a good number that are hoping that it's a girl, not because they want a little daughter, but because they know they're not going to be seen as a threat. They're not going to be seen as violent or as a problem to where you have these kids in third grade where, you know, the teachers are already getting them ready for that pipeline. you know, as the Secretary of Health and Human Services says or whatever title he has, you know, you have people who think that it's still okay to rehome kids because they have ADHD. Right.

And considering the Kennedy family's history of hospitalizing and homing people, I don't think he should ever speak about relocating family members. No. Because if anybody, not that I'm pro relocating people, but if anybody in that family deserves a conservatorship, it's him. Well, I mean, yeah. You know, I'm not saying that anybody deserves a lobotomy. I'm just if I was carrying knitting needles and I was in the vicinity,

I might try amateur hobbying. I don't know, but the brainworm might have you to it, though. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I don't mind meeting it in the middle, you know, so. Somewhere in the pittial gland. Yeah. Yeah. So how was it Ted talking and then shutting down within like, like you said, like a week later? I'm going to tell you something that very few people will probably say. And I'm saying this is somebody who lost people during COVID. Yeah. The best part of COVID to me was I had nothing to do but school. So for me, it was it was one of those things where I could focus on this. And what ended up happening.

is my project changed. And as a result of my project changing, one, it's going to relate to the topic that we're, I'm sorry, the film that we're going to talk about. Yeah. Because I changed that topic, I found gold. I bet. Because my initial project was I was going to go and look at the freedom petition suits,

which were a new thing that people were researching. And those of you don't know about, I'm sorry, about freedom petitions, There were basically court orders and lawsuits in order for enslaved people to sue or have someone sue on their behalf for their freedom. And this is starting in the 1750s and in some cases earlier. But I was doing that and then I realized, well, I was in Phoenix for a while. I'm in the Phoenix area working at Arizona State. And this one question I had when I first got there was, which I still had at, I was living there was, it's like, how did black people get to Arizona?

Like, what brought black people here? And whenever you talk to someone in this, as far as in Arizona, they would talk about how people, as far as just in general, came to Arizona. And they'll list, you know, here are the five seas. It's cattle, cotton, climate. And I can't remember the rest of them because they're not that important. Fleying from Boston. Yeah.

Yeah. The idea that people were coming as far as agriculturally for the, as far as to cultivate cotton and for the agriculture, I'm sorry, for the, the cattle industry. And that wasn't what black people were coming for initially. And the way it was posed when people were telling me, oh, they were coming for cotton in the 1880s and 1890s. And I just, I looked at the information after I was hearing this. I don't see any black people in Phoenix. You have black people like in the other areas that because Phoenix is not the capital city yet. Right.

But once it becomes a capital city, once it's moved from, oh my gosh. Once it's moved from the territorial. It was Flagstaff and it was somewhere else because it had two. It wasn't Scottsdale. No, no, it wasn't Scottsdale. It was, I'm going to get in so much trouble now. But anyway, it's the original capital. It doesn't have a cool story like the original capital of Georgia where it was.

hey you're not going to seat the black delegates we'll just move the capital to atlanta but in the case of phoenix like once they started getting Prescott the first does Prescott thank you i was like it starts with the B but it's the the the P looks like a B in my head so there you go Prescott and i was like it's not paradise vass yeah my english teacher was from Prescott so that's why why I remember were they nice she was wonderful she she whooped my ass okay is a sophomore and then I got somebody else as a junior and I transferred out specifically to go back to her class. And the counselor was like, why? You did not have good grades there.

I'm like, because I know exactly what to expect with her. And I know I'm going to learn. And I'm not getting that over here. So please put me back in. Yeah. I was going to, I'm only saying not to generalize, but sure. I've never heard anything bad about people from Prescott as far as like they're going to be, they're going to be square with you. Yes.

They're going to do what needs to be done. Oh, yeah. They might not, might be a little rough, might be a little rough, but yeah, they're not people from Scottsdale. Sorry, Scott Stale. You've still got to deal with being Scottsdale. They're trying to be Orange County. And they just be Scottsdale. Be Scottsdale. You don't need to be Orange County.

Yeah. But yeah, when you first. Well, Orange County, I don't even think they want to be Orange County anymore. We're looking at you, Wollon the Creek. But when people first started settling in, in Phoenix, around like 1890, you only had a few hundred people. Capital then changes. It becomes there early in the 20th century. And they start drawing out laws before they have a significant black population. So they do a preemptive, they do a preemptive Jim Crow strike, which is

when we have at least eight black children, I'm sorry, because they change it to eight. When we have at least 23 black children, we will create segregated schools. Oh. Now, mind you, 23. Yeah. Yeah. 23. But they changed it, I get when the territorial legislature became a state,

became a state legislature. They lowered the number from 23 to 12. And I think another number that was settled that was eight. But the guy who was the governor, a territorial governor, did not want to have any type of segregation. Because they argued the most practical thing ever, it cost. too much money. We're going to have to build separate schools. We're going to have to build separate buildings. We're going to build. And so George Kibby, he argued against it. And he represented the plaintiff in the first lawsuit against the school district. He lost,

but it was, they lost off of technicality. But what's really cool is now that there was a base of people like responding and there were people in the city that were willing to help out, at least the black community that's growing at this time in South Phoenix, this now starts them on the road to where they can stop things from happening before they happen. And again, one of the things that they're able to stop is birth of a nation. I'm going to let you do the summary and everything of the film. Again, like I said, I can talk for a while about everything.

That's why I said, I'm going to give you a time to rain me in because I will be here until two, three o'clock in the morning. and my wife will be wondering who I'm talking. You can just tell it's Damien and Ed, two really nice guys in Northern California. Look, we all saw the State Farm commercial. Yeah. There you go. Perfect.

Okay. So, yeah, we're going to talk about birth of a nation. So to get to birth of a nation, of course, we need to go back to the first Olympics. No, I'm kidding. I have a history of, like, Ed has got like a dartboard of like how far back is even going to go to explain this thing in 2000s pro wrestling, you know. Second century C.E. Yeah.

Yeah. Like I was describing, I was explaining deep space nine once, just one episode in it. And I went back to the third king of Rome. Oh, my goodness. Oh, it's fun. Yeah. It actually is a really good episode. I think so.

Thank you. So Thomas Frederick Dixon, Jr. was born January 11th, 1864 to, Thomas Jeremiah Frederick Dixon the second and Amanda Elvira McAfee Dixon because fuck a short name. His father was a very well-known Baptist minister, which is a trait that he passed on to at least three of his sons and a land-owning slaver, which is something he also tried to pass onto his sons. But damn the timing. His mother was also his father's second wife. Dickson Sr's first wife had first wife's father

had left him and his first wife both land and humans whom he would enslave the total value was about $100,000 in 1860s money Oh wow So obviously Dixon Jr. grows up during reconstruction

So he only knows the stories of the family's fortune That came through enslaving other human beings And he himself resented farmwork which just peak whiteness in where he grew up. I forget the state that he grew up in, to be honest. I want to say Tennessee, but I don't think that that's right. Dr. G., do you remember the state that Dix? I do not, but Tennessee and Kentucky would be the best guesses.

Yeah. So he resents farm work. He claims that his adolescents gave him an appreciation for working people, though, which is funny because he was raised by a family that made money by working people. His family eventually had their land confiscated by the government to help promote land reform. And Dixon Jr., of course, saw this as political corruption, and from an early age he saw reconstruction as nothing but a corrupt effort to dispossess people from their farms. So, yeah, you can guess who's going to just absolutely love the lost cause.

Dixon Sr. and his brother-in-law, Colonel Leroy McAfee, they joined the KKK early on, early adopters, to bring back white supremacy, which was the system upon which the law and order of the South had been built. Okay, real quick, real quick. Point of order, Colonel McAfee, do we know, did he ever actually hold an actual military commission of any kind? or was that one of those bullshit white southern people? Oh, well, you know, the colonel, no, fuck you. Has he gotten an actual commission like ever in a real military? And like the Confederate military, I'm going to say, doesn't really count. Well, then no. You beat me to it.

I was going to say two things. The colonel thing is one of those things that almost becomes a nickname for people. I should say. becomes a nickname in name only. So we had like the the mascot for the University of Mississippi is Colonel Rib. Yeah. I'm sorry, used to be Colonel Rib. Thankfully used to be.

But there are a lot of people who can't get over the fact that the mascot is a plantation owner, a slave owner, is the imagery. It's right there. Yeah. Well, given what the university was built by. or who? Well, I can go into a lot of details about that because the university was created for the purpose of fighting against abolition. Yeah. And for the purpose of maintaining slavery.

Ask me how I know. Quick question about that. How do you feel? I do the tours on slavery at the campus. How do you feel knowing that you teach at that school? Do you feel like you've won on some level? No, no. And I'll tell what this is no secret because, I mean, most people on campus have heard this story and I've told this story.

Sure. When I lived in Mississippi as a kid, to give you at least a background on me, stuff that you didn't pull up. So the idea that, you know, I was here in Mississippi as a kid because my mom was stationed here when she was the Army. This was like her recruiting time as part of her career. And when we were here, I was like, I think I was like eight, nine years old at the time. And I'm like, what the hell? I just saw Confederate flags, because the game was on. I'm like, oh, no, I know this is wrong.

Yeah. And then I, you know, came back periodically after my parents got divorced. And I would come back and I'm like, I'm never going to old miss. It's not going to. And this is one of the few times I'll call it that. So I'm never going to old mess. crazy. I would never go there. When I was looking for my PhD, they had a really good program, had some really good faculty, and I had to basically say, you know what, get over yourself,

go there. Check it out. See how things are. And there have been some problems, some issues. I mean, if you look at the history of the universe in the past six years since I've been here, there have been a number of incidents that have brought national and international attention. And I don't mean when J.D. Vance and Erica Kirk came here. I mean, like protests on campus. When the clan came on campus to protest, the removal of the statue, the removal of the statue, or relocation of the statue. So I don't see it as like a winning or losing or just a, you know, just an even situation or balance situation. I see it as this is kind of what we do throughout time is you eventually progress to a point where what you're doing.

doing is not, I don't want to say it's not special, but it's not a landmark moment. It's normal. Whereas I was never barred from going to the University of Mississippi. So somebody like James Meredith and that first group of black students that went to the University of Mississippi who went through hell, like just hearing the stuff and talking to them what they went through. Oh, there's bullet holes in some of the buildings. I looked at them and I say, you know what, I'm going to stay here.

Because if there were people that pissed off about you coming here to school and then so pissed off that there was. a black fraternity that they burned the building down. Right. This was, I think, early 80s. Yeah. The Confederate flag wasn't, I should say, the Confederate flag was never removed. It was just that the football coach banned sticks from the games and then people just

stop bringing flags. But there's been a lot of change. I think the issue is there's been a good amount of change in the past 15 to 20 years, a really good amount in the past five years. But because of the weight of Mississippi's past and the weight of the university's past, you're still going to have students, I'm sorry, you're still going to have parents coming up to me on visits, not knowing who I am, and then ask me when I was a student and then also when I'm faculty here, is this a place, a good place to send my child? You know, as black parents wanted know, is this university past whatever happened?

Right. And I have to remind parents, you know, before I let them know, I am. That's anywhere. That's every campus. You have, you have situations everywhere, but you don't have the resources everywhere. Here, we have the resources if something happens, if something goes down. You have other places where they don't have the infrastructure in place. Sure. You know, if there is, I don't know, whichever university deals with sexual assault, but if they have an uptick or a massive uptick in it, and they don't have something on campus or some facility or some type of plan of action, you can't do anything about that issue. You can't do anything about that crisis in those attacks that people are suffering.

And the same thing is if students are being discriminated against based off of race, their sexual identity, their sexual orientation, I'm sorry, gender identity or sexual orientation. If you don't have those resources there, one, those students aren't going to stay. And those students are not going to speak well of. your university when they leave. Right. And that's going to cause other people not to go. And this is nothing against fraternity and sorority culture,

but you can't run a university that's just off of sororities and fraternities. I'm saying that because fraternities and sororities are huge in the South. Yeah. But you can't just run your universities off of, you know, the Panhellenic associations and sports. There are going to be other students that are coming. There are going to be students, international students, students of various backgrounds.

Sure. And you need to make sure that each one of those students, their issues are addressed. Yeah. I think at least with the team that we have, I'm biased because I know the people on the team. The team that we have, like, they are serious. Something happens. They want to do something about it as far as some type of programming. I'm not just limited program, but some type of programming or at least some type of educational

event that people can attend to where we can talk about, what to play. place. Obviously, it's been harder in the past year, year and a half, but it's harder everywhere in the past year, year and a half. Right. Right. It's not out of proportion. Right. Yeah. And in fact, it might be out of proportion more constructive because of the the infrastructures that you're talking about. So the reason I asked was because I teach, I used to teach Latin. I was a Latin teacher for many, many years. And my ancestors had a wall built against them to keep them out. And so I always wondered if my teaching Latin was a victory for them or was me selling out. And I've never been able to clarify. But, you know. Well, let me go back to my answer.

I will say the grad student version of me looked at it that way, looked at it as, you know, because I was here when we had the celebration to honor the 16th anniversary. So there were moments when I thought, like, there was a time when I couldn't come. Right. I don't see it as my victory in that sense. To answer your question that way.

Sure. I see this as a kind of a collective victory as far as the idea that we're growing to a point where we don't have to look at, you know, I don't know. Instead of 451 black students in the graduate program, now we have 452. But you notice if there's a,

drop. I mean, a significant drop. You notice if there's significant increase. And when there is that drop, you know, you look for for ways in which to increase admission. Because the university itself, and I think Mississippi State might be a little bit better at this. That's probably the thing I'll probably get in trouble for more than anything else in this conversation. But the black population of Mississippi is around 35 to 36 percent, somewhere around there. The university's demographics, as far as black students is still in the teens. Now, you're never going to be able to get 38% because when you have international students, you have students that are coming from out of state. But as far as the, when you start looking at the students that are there that are in state,

it's still not matching. And as far as in-state student comparison racially or by background, it's still in the teens. Gotcha. You look at it that way. Sure. Oh, I was just making sure, Ed that you weren't frozen, sorry. Yeah. So. Yeah. All right. So I'm aware that my connection is lacking.

Yeah. I'm aware that my connection is lagging, so I'm trying not to interfere too much. Sure. So Dixon Jr. When he was five years old, he saw the KKK parading through the streets at night. And he cast him as heroes in his mind because he loves pageantry. Now, being the child of a wealthy and well-connected. man, Dixon Jr. went to college at Wake Forest College and got a master's degree by 1883.

And from there, he went to Johns Hopkins, and he spent only a year or two to pursue a career in writing and acting. But while he was there, Dixon met a young, bright student who quickly became good friends with him, a student who had grown up in Virginia and would later become the president of Princeton University. Woodrow Wilson. Wilson and Dixon took at least one class together and spent a lot of time together, reportedly. Dixon Jr., from now on, I'm just going to call him Dixon,

quit his efforts at journalism, at law, and at acting to then go become a Baptist preacher like his father and two of his brothers. While preaching in 1896, he wrote something called The Failure of Protestantism in New York and its causes, which was essentially a polemic tract against suppression. He has this quote in it. He says, quote, I thank God that there is not today the clang of a single slaves chain on this continent. Slavery may have had its beneficent aspects, but democracy is the destiny of the race because all men are bound together in the bonds of fraternal equality with one common father above. So this, I'm just seating the ground here for like the first act of birth of a nation because

slavery was the original sin, not because slavery was bad in and of itself, but it was because it had a corruptive influence on white folks, and it brought black folks here. Okay. That's the- That makes sense. Yeah. So now, when the United States starts looking toward empire as a possible goal, his missionary zeal takes over and his desire for equality among whites and non-whites, fades to

of the background, democracy was just not suitable to a semi-barbarous people whom he thought lacked the judgment and self-control to manage their own affairs, like in the Philippine Islands. The proof was that they'd been defeated. This means then that Filipinos and any other backward natives that the United States conquered or had the bad luck to get subjugated must be governed without their consent until they prove themselves capable of absorbing the white man's culture and practicing democracy. And there are some who are more scotch-guarded than others. And again, he's a Southern Baptist.

And this comes from his political science classes at Johns Hopkins, like the ones that he took with Woodrow Wilson. The prevailing belief in political science classes at that time taught at that time was that the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples and their descendants were the only ones capable of democracy. So, yeah, you know, it's amazing what the Bible can mean for you if you just want it to. So Dixon had originally feared an immigrant-led problem for democracy in America in America

because he said it would lessen the influence of the right kinds of white people. Sounds like what I keep seeing on Facebook from politicians. Boy, howdy. It sounds like Madison Grant just a little bit earlier, you know. Madison Grant, who was a famous anthropologist taught in the academy as well. So it's in the soup. Now, by 1900, since the United States had entered into colonialism, Dixon also reexamined the position of black people in American democracy.

And in his view, as it turns out, a racial class of national dimensions was imminent. Or not class, a racial crisis. to the point of taking priority over the immigrant revolution that he was afraid of. So again, this is by 1900. So he stopped. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead.

Just because, of course. Yeah. And I'm sure somewhere in there, there's something about Catholics being a problem. Oh, absolutely. And the Irish aren't to him. the right kind of white people and Italians aren't the right kind of white people and yeah no all the slavs all the Jews coming from

Russia oh god all fucking mighty yeah well yeah yeah yeah so that's that's what we call what academic the path to whiteness the idea that all these groups aren't but as soon as they do the right thing or they're needed for numbers so yeah you have these yahus run around about white replacement theory like you're saying the same same nonsense people are saying 300 years ago.

Yes. Well, and as soon as you drop the vowel from the end of your name or the beginning of your name, you could whiten up. So now he quit preaching because you're going to love this Ed. He quits preaching and he began working to unite people against what he called black peril. And so he starts writing novels. Oh, oh, God. Really?

Yeah. And so he writes the leopard spots, a Roman. The romance of the white man's burden. What? It's so predictable. Yes. The arc is a hundred percent. None of these people are ever original.

Yeah. Oh, my God. The romance of the white man's burden. 1865 to 1900. There's a phrase. Yes. There's a fucking phrase. God, damn it.

He writes this book in 1902, and on the inside of it, he had a quote from Jeremiah 1323. And the quote from Jeremiah 1323 is, is basically the Ethiopian cannot change his skin any more than the leopard can change his spots. The evil, you cannot stop doing evil and then cease to be evil. It depends on your translation, but that's Damien phrasing it. And I'm sure, I'm sure he used the King James version in the book. Yeah. He has to have.

Because Southern Baptist and like they get so hard about the King James version. The worst fucking translation in the history of theology. Never underestimated power of unity. Carry on. Now, Dixon meant this book as two specific things. First, he was trying to reply to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin from 50 years earlier. He literally used her character's names in his book, just in case. anyone didn't think that he meant to respond to her book by recasting the names.

Secondly, it was the first in a trilogy of books aimed at showing reconstruction as a disaster for all involved. Yeah. You know, see, when you phrase it that way as a disaster for all involved, that's like the only way I'm ever going to agree with this guy because every other detail I'm going to want to beat him to death with a union musket. He didn't mean it the way you mean it, though. Like that's one of those things.

It's a disaster. It's like when people say persons. He's kind of like who they consider citizens for that matter. Who do they consider citizens? Because apparently if you are an immigrant and you become naturalized, then you have people saying like, well, you're still not a citizen. Right. Or my favorite word lately is heritage citizens.

Like, oh, God. Oh, fuck yourself. Like go, go with a sleeper sofa. Fuck yourself. with a couch. Here's the one thing I've got to say with all the people who do the heritage nonsense or I even have a problem with people who refer to themselves as foundational black Americans. Because that doesn't mean anything other than there were people who came before you.

Right. I mean, only a few generations. Yeah. And the only thing that separates you from somebody who moves here is that you were born here. Yeah. That's the only way we had we gained our citizenship. other my wife she had to take tests if i forgot how much money we spent on it but it's one of those things are like i think i'm going to catch it from maga but i think that people who earn their

citizenship are better citizens than the rest of us because we don't do anything yeah and we definitely don't go out and both yeah i mean collectively chronology and accident of uh geography that's it yeah geography what does it call The birth lottery. Yeah, birth lottery. Yeah. Yeah, we take it entirely for granted. Yeah.

And it's an interesting thing that there's a similar thing that I've been told as an adult convert to Catholicism. And of course, this doesn't apply in all cases looking at you, Vance, fucker. But in many cases, yeah, speaking of. And his wife's pregnant, you think he would be. better at the pullout method. You think. It's a kind of couch. You really would.

But, you know, that somebody who goes through our CIA, oftentimes, has more of an appreciation for many of the point of the catechism than somebody who is a cradle Catholic. Because for them, it was just, they grew up in it, whereas we actually had to study it. Like. We had to sit down and read it and talk about it. And I kind of want to find out who Vance's RCAA coordinator was because I want to look him straight in the eye and go, how's that working out for you? It was the Catholic equivalent of Charles Atlas.

You know, you just send in money and a few stamps. I kind of feel like that. Here's my theory about it, though. I think he is going to take advantage of the Southern Evangelicals, and then he is going to convert because of all this stuff with Pope Leo. He's going to convert and then use that as to slow walk

and not really slow walking anything at this point, but to ease us into Christian nationalism. So he can go ahead and start saying all of his nonsense and the Pope can't say anything to him because he's not a Catholic. And then, oh my God, the Pope has excommunicated me. Where am I going to go now? Which Pope Leo won't because he knows that that's what J.D. Vance

wants his attention. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have to say there's a part of me that kind of hopes Jadie Vance does, does try to keep saying some shit because at a certain point, I can just, you know, rummage around in my closet and get out in my surcoat because he's a fucking heretic. Like, I'm that kind of traditional Catholic.

Like, okay, asshole. No. Speaking of adult converts. Yeah. Yeah. I got to be honest. Like, I left the Catholic church years ago. Mm-hmm.

But I'll be honest, Pope Leo. Yeah. I was going to say, Pope Francis first, but Pope Francis and Pope Leo, they may have me donating money to the church as much as I won't do it. But they may have me donating money to the church because my thing is my entire life, I was taught you're supposed to think about the weak. You're supposed to think about the marginal. You're supposed to think about the poor.

You're supposed to think about it. And so when people are like, oh, well, why do you believe these things with, you know, politics? because I was raised to believe we should take care of people. Right. Full stop. Full stop. Yeah.

And when he's out, you know, as far as Pope Leo is talking about, hey, I'm concerned about the vulnerable, the children, these people who are getting killed and doing all these things and then you turn it into, well, what the fuck does he know? Right. I'm like, dude, he's been steady in this for decades. He's a professional theologian. Like, yeah. He's he's the vicar of Christ.

Yeah. I don't like, like, again, if you got me on the side of the Pope, what the fuck? Yeah. So, yeah. All right. So the Pope must be doing something, something profoundly right. If, if, you know, the atheists are like, yeah, that guy, what he said.

Right. Right. Like, I was a former altar boy. Like, I was in it. So, all right, so the basics of the novel were that reconstruction officials who had previously benefited from enslaving people, but now sought power in this new context and carpetbaggers from the north and people who had previously been held in slavery were all the villains. And the KKK were the anti-heroes of the story. So that's the first one. That's the Leopard's Spots.

Now, his second book comes out in 1905. Cinnamon toast fuck. Oh, it's going to get fun. In 1905, he writes the Klansman, a historical romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, this book, now you've got to understand, romance is a type of genre here. But this book was a rousing success as well because it took the reader from the Civil War through Reconstruction, and it showed the inherent dangers and follies of elevating black people to position the power. Dixon cast slavery is a very bad thing.

It was the original sin. like I'd said earlier. But then it portrayed black people as reverting to savagery, rape, violence, corruption, robbery, especially, and especially being interested in the gold standard of all life, which is marrying white women, which marrying in 1905 is code for having sex with. Now, Dixon also showed northern politicians as corrupt and venal and using black people to further their own ends at the expanse of white people in the South. and Dixon also gave special attention to the inherently corrupt characters of Silas Lynch,

a mixed race but black assumed assistant who violates all the laws of man and God. And then, of course, finally, the KKK comes in, rescues the white people who are all beset on all sides by those elate against him and restore the natural order of white supremacy in the South by the end of the book. His prologue to the Klansman, Dixon says, I have sought to preserve this romance both the letter and the spirit of this remarkable period. The men who enact the drama of fierce revenge

into which I have woven a double love story are historical figures. I have merely changed their names without taking a liberty with any essential historical fact. I teach courses on the place of film in history and the place of history in film. and one of the main things I tell my students, when we start and even when we have selections,

I will show them the most dangerous words that will ever be at the beginning of a movie, which are, this is based on true events. And I do appreciate that he at least says, hey, this is based on anything. But you're framing it that way. Right. And I had to write this down because I have to get in my mind. Margaret Mitchell hate. She did the same thing.

I mean, with her book, it was, I'm not going to talk to anybody who knows anything about this. Oh, well, there's some civil, there were some people in my family that were in the Civil War. I'm going to ask them about that in slavery. So all you got was their perspective. And then people, I mean, up to the point of film actually being out, people would take historical fiction or even just literary works as works of history. Yeah.

And when films started getting made and you have films that are historically based, that is sadly where the majority of Americans learn their history. Yeah. And I mean, learn as far as in quotes. Yeah. And speaking of narrative versus history. Yeah, you can have a film that is very great and very great and historically accurate. And you just build a story around it.

So like Titanic, very historically accurate. except for the the events that take place interpersonally right as far as the the star mapping the ship how it how it crashed the boat actually sinks in real time in the film yeah that's pretty cool yeah and that's a great great use of it but when you have this fantasy romanticized nonsense fever dream from dunning right and from john topkins because they're they don't they shouldn't be off the hook as well because they're responsible for the lost cause. And the daughters of the Confederacy, let us let us not, not take,

not miss an opportunity to throw sand in their eyes. I won't. I made a 15-part video talking about them and people still came and said, well, they're doing good things. No, they wear stupid hats and they do terrible things. Yeah. They do ugly, horrible shit.

Yeah. And they've had a corrosive effect on our understanding, of our own goddamn history and the organization should be pilloried. And without them, you wouldn't have this movie and without this movie, you wouldn't have most of historiography of the 20th century surrounding

reconstruction to the point where Eric Foner and Charles Postal had to point to W.E.B. Du Bois go, no, he's got it. And then people finally start paying some attention this century.

So the book quickly gets turned into a play at Dixon's urging because grifter's going to grift. He took correspondence courses on how to write plays and he retained 50% of the ownership of the play itself. It opened in 1905 and it was very successful in much of the South except for the places where it was banned as a play, Macon, Georgia, Montgomery, Alabama, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And here's a quote from the Washington Post from September of 1906. Thomas Dixon's play, The Klansman, booked to appear in the theater here Wednesday night,

will be denied that privilege by order of the mayor in view of the race riots in Atlanta. It is deemed unwise to allow a performance of the Klansman. Steps will be taken to keep the show out of the theaters in Georgia. The public is not favorable to a second appearance. The city council tonight unanimously passed an ordinance calling on the mayor to prohibit the production of Thomas Dixon's The Klansman Thursday next, on account of the excited condition of the public mind through the Atlanta disorders. Wow.

Yeah. So you remember Alfred Jerry where he had a puppet show that caused a riot. Right. Nobody got murdered for it. So different. The Washington Post also in September the very next day. I love the Washington Post. They took him to task.

This play does not possess even the merit of historical truth. It is as false as Uncle Tom's cabin and a hundred times more wicked, for it excites the passions and prejudices of the dominant class at the expense of the defenseless minority. We can imagine no circumstances under which its production would be useful or wholesome, since it disgusts the judicious and well-informed and exerts an influence only upon the ignorant, the credulous, and the ill-disposed. But in the present condition of the public mind at the South is a firebrand, a council of barbarity, in fact a crime. So in other words, showing this book in play form is going to be very bad for all of us because we're so stupid. So, you know, we're going to turn into a movie soon. Now, many of the places where it played, lynchings actually did follow. Bainbridge, Georgia in October of 1905.

There was a paper I found from Minneapolis Journal, October. The feeling against ends, I'm not going to say the Spanish word for black, never kindly has been embittered by the Dixon play following which stories of ends depredations during the reconstruction period have been revived and whites have been wrought up to a high tension. In Springfield, Missouri, in April, they talked about the lynching crowd there, quote, seemed filled with the spirit of the Klansman, which created such a strong anti-end feeling here six weeks ago. So, like, you literally have two newspapers saying it was because of the play that these people were murdered. And it wasn't wrong. Dixon's response was that the lynchings were, quote,

oh, and Ed, I hope you're drinking tonight. The lynchings were, quote, caused by the commission of a crime by ends, a crime so horrible and revolting to every instinct of white manhood, that a whole community went mad with rage for justice, swift and terrible. Such things have happened in the South before, and they will happen again so long as such crimes are committed by ends. He said that in the St. Joseph Gazette. So, hey, what do you say about the fact that black people are being murdered because of where

your play is produced? Oh, no, no, no. It was a black guy raping a white woman. So... So I've said this before. Yeah. going to say it again. The church does not actually have a position on officially stating whether anybody is in hell.

We cannot know for certain whether or not they are. That being said, I really hope his spot is especially bad. Yeah. Next to Reagan. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, next to Reagan and Thatcher. Yeah.

And, yeah, like. Oh, and our good friend, Henry Kissinger. Yes. I hope they're just on a spit. Yeah. Just a continuous spit. Yes. Yeah.

Oh. Wow. That. Wait, Carl rope's it? Yeah. I mean, you know, why? Oh, my gosh. Oh, gosh.

I was ready. Like, wait a second. Now I'm curious. Am I just manifesting? You're about to break out the confed. Right. Oh, no. Oh, yeah.

I just the, yeah, no. Wow. That's, that takes a level of sociopathy. Yes. Like fucking sociopath. Kathy. Yeah. Or like I like to call it,

college educated at Johns Hopkins in the 1880s. And projection. Yeah. Lots of projection. Well, we're going to get to the projection in about 10 years. Well, here's a book because I don't want to leave this book for the end because I will forget it. And I would beat myself up over it. There's a book by historian Peggy Pascoe called What Comes Naturally.

And it's just a history of anti-misagination, anti-racianian, anti-race mixing laws and going back into the 17th century, how it starts getting established to where you young Irish women who are being brought over his indentured servants, don't intermingle with the Negroes. Because if you do, there's going to be a fine, there's going to be imprisonment, and if you are a white woman or classified as white, because obviously Irish weren't, but if you happen to be a British woman who is here, and you're found to have been. laid with them, your status changes from free to slave. That, like you had that early punishment, I think was 1640s.

Oh, the John Punch case. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you have sex with a Negro, your status is going to change. In fact, we will determine that you are a Negro and then you're going to be enslaved. Yeah.

Yeah. But the punishment. Wow. Of course, it also went with white men with black women. But what was interesting was Peggy. Pasco points out, I did a lot of looking, but I couldn't find any white men James charts for sexual improprieties with Negro women. Or it was referred to in the text as wenches.

Right. And then they spent the next several years overturning that for them so that it was not even considered rape for a white man to do that. And therefore it was not punishable. I just mean just intercourse, just the idea of its intercourse, they would be fined, but she

couldn't find any fines or any imprisonment or anyone who was listed as white. Or men, I'm sorry, men who were listed. That's a poor people crime. So the program for the play cost 50 cents, which at this time, that's 10 times as much as a newspaper would cost.

And it had more than 50 pages in it, including three essays by Dixon himself. the future of the N, the story of the Ku Klux Klan, and what our nation owes to the clan. He also claimed that this play was a sequel to Uncle Tom's cabin. So,

yeah. It's like my sequel to John Steinbecks the Pearl. Right. I wrote it when I was 15. Like, I don't... Yeah. That's just...

Yeah. So, and it's... At this time that we, yeah, I just want to interject. There's a term for that. And we did several episodes on it. It's called fanfic. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And most of it is bad. Yeah. But then that's Sturgeon's law. But like, yeah. No, it's not a fucking sequel. You're a fanfic writer. Fuck off.

So. Okay. Sorry. Carry on. At this time, the KKK was a non-entity. It was very unpopular and it had been broken during Reconstruction under Ulysses S. Grant. The book and the play did not bring it much popularity. It just brought the white rage.

But the book and the play aren't what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about the movie. So I could get into the technical aspects of it and then, Don, if you want to take over from there. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, Birth of a Nation comes to the movie theaters in 1915. It's a two-part film with an intermission, a total of 12 reels of film. Part one ends, yeah, 12 fucking reels. It's three and a half hours. And by the way, for those of you who want to go and watch it after this podcast episode, I'm telling you right now, don't. Just look at the highlights of the film. Yeah. Just look at like the five or 10 minutes of highlights that are there because there's no reason

that movie should have been three hours other than the cool technical stuff that they did, like making the make it look like there's fire and things. But I'm so sorry. And when I say it's the racist matrix of its time, I mean it. Like technically it's a masterpiece for 1915 because cameras used to weigh like 800, 900 pounds. So moving the camera was a big goddamn deal. like yeah so okay so it part one ends with lincoln's assassination uh kind of a martyrdom to atone for our

original sin of slavery and part two is where the action starts to pick up uh where much of the focus is on reconstruction and the individual character's actions uh in this part now dixon took his uh his movie idea to d w griffith uh famous fuck stick of hollywood um a film director who innovated new editing techniques and styles and new film angles and created a lot of things in a brand new industry. Griffith is credited with the flashback, the intercut scenes, the fade-ins and fade-outs, and cutting close-ups. Griffith was born in Kentucky, and his father was a colonel in the Confederate Army. He got into film directing when he moved to New York because Edison was trying to create New Jersey

as the film capital of the United States but eventually people realize natural lighting is better for film so Southern California now more importantly to all of this Griffith has a special place in my heart of being somebody that I wish there was a hell for because he's famous for killing extras he believed the same things that Dixon believed

so he Dixon goes to a man who has the same ideology slavery is regrettable. Reconstruction was a huge step backward for society in the South, and the world would be a better place if black people were kept in a position of subservience, because naturally that's how it's supposed to be. So when Dixon comes to him with a movie about the heroism of the KKK, Griffith is like, yeah, we'll do that. He offers Dixon $2,500 and a 25% share in the film. Filming happened from July through October of 1914.

It was mostly shot in Southern California, and it had no black principal actors, despite it being about the Civil War, slavery, and the fears for allowing black people to be in charge of reconstruction. Now, extras were black, but they were accommodated and segregated facilities for the film. The only black people,

whom you see as principals, therefore, are white people in blackface. So Gus is a white man painted black. It cost about $100,000, produce and it was whittled down from 36 hours to three hours. You thought Apocalypse now was self-indulgent. No. Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no. 36 fucking hours? Mm-hmm. What, how do you make a movie that long? Like, like, like, like, over and above the fact that we're talking about the ugliest, like beyond, beyond, the fact that this is the ugliest thing ever, ever committed to

celluloid. Like, yeah, like how do you, it's not, though, that's the thing. How do you make any movie? It's the most successful and most popular ugly thing that was committed to celluloid. But there's plenty of awful early cinema that is hyper racist, hyperviolent. Oh, no, I don't. Okay. So it's

it's the, it's the valedictorian of summer school. But Now, some of the edits Okay. Yeah. Now, some of the edits that were made were specifically due to the insistence of various city leaders' objections to some very racist scenes. And I have not been able to track down any of the edited out stuff. So the other 33 hours I've never seen.

Birth of the Nation was also, Birth of a Nation was also the first film ever to be screened in the White House. famously, right? Guess who was the president who screened it, Ed? Woodrow fucking Wilson. Yes. So the president denied believing in the same values as those who made the film, despite having his own book actually quoted in the film's title cards. Quote, the white men were roused to a mere instinct of self-preservation

until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the same. southern country. Now here's the thing. Woodrow Wilson was the first president with a PhD. First president with a PhD in history. You'd think he would have known better. But he was also our final president to have owned slaves.

Technically, he was a little boy and his family owned them. But he still benefited from enslaving human beings. So. And I think, I mean, I could get into the screening at Raleigh Hotel. in oh go ahead sorry uh he was he was raised in slave owning culture and he was inculcated in those values and he never let go of them and yeah no he massively he massively segregated the federal service um fired as many black people as he could most of his cabinet were southern democrats uh when he was president of princeton he did all he could to segregate and

push out black people from a Ivy League college in the north. And I could go into the screening in Raleigh Hotel and all that, but I kind of do want to get to the whole reason that Dr. G is here, which is to talk about this movie and its plot as a horror film. So in true Damien fashion, I've taken up the first at least episode of this so that we can get into this. So the odds are the edit will have already happened, or it's about to happen.

And with that, we cut the show right there. Not a bad spot to break it, obviously, given what I was actually trying to convey. But once again, per the usual, we has just so much fun with our guest, Dr. Donald Guillory, that we went on for hours. So the next episode will open up with very little transition, unfortunately. but you heard the history of it and now you are done with part one of birth of a nation as a horror film with Dr. Donald Guillory. So plugs. Go to Donald R. Guillory. Donald R.Gillery.com.

Go to the section there where he's selling his books and buy all of his books. his kids will want to go to college someday too. Other plugs, you can find us at geekhistorytime.com. You've got the archive there. You can also find us on Spotify, on Amazon app, podcast app, and on the Apple podcast app. You can also find us on YouTube at Geek History Time. If you type that in, you'll find our YouTube channel where you've got all of our archives as they are slowly filtering in.

So yeah, and then finally, of course, on the first Friday of every month, you could find me with capital punishment down in Sacramento, 9 p.m. on the first Friday of every night or every month on the Sacramento Comedy Spot. $15 tickets. Get them online at satcomitbott.com. And yeah, give it a go. So if you want to follow Dr. Donald Guillory on TikTok, if you want to follow Dr. Donald Guillory on TikTok, It's, I believe it's token black guide. If you type that in, you'll find him. And yeah, we just had so much fun that we kept on going. So I will stop this here, telling you to go to all those places, buy all those books, and also check out his TED Talk. But until next time for Edward Blaylock and Dr. Donald Guillory, our esteemed guest, I'm Damien Harmony.

And as always, keep rolling 20s.