The Birth of a Debate

D.W. Griffith’s notoriously racist film The Birth of a Nation, which tells a mythicized origin story of the KKK, is experiencing something of a revival. As Dorian Lynskey explains in this piece for Slate, the reason has less to do with the story the film tells, so much as it does with the debate the film sparked: should there be a limit to what subjects art can handle, and if so, who gets to set that limit? It’s the kind of eternal debate that has always mattered in the art world, but especially matters in our current clime, when First Amendment freedoms, censorship, and government oversight frequently dominate political discussions. And according to Lynskey, this question of whether dangerous art can ever merit suppression, has been one of the very debates that defined American history.

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Actors costumed in the full regalia of the Ku Klux Klan chase down a white actor in blackface in a still from ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ the first feature-length film, directed by D. W. Griffith, California, 1914. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1916 a 41-year-old man in Los Angeles published a short pamphlet called “The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America.” In passionate if somewhat pompous tones, the author described motion pictures as “the laboring man’s university,” but warned that their power to educate and instruct the nation could be “muzzled by a petty and narrow-minded censorship” that would create “a sugar-coated, virtuously-garbed version … in order to satisfy the public mentors of our so-called morals.” He quoted dozens of journalists and politicians who opposed censorship, cited Shakespeare and the Bible for good measure, and protested that “this new art was seized by the powers of intolerance as an excuse for an assault on our liberties.”

The pamphlet’s author was the film director D.W. Griffith, and the subtext for his First Amendment flag-waving was the fierce campaign against his 1915 motion picture The Birth of a Nation.

Read on at Slate.

Elizabeth and Hazel

It’s among the most famous images from the Civil Rights Movement: a young black girl, clutching her books, walks away from Little Rock Central High School, while a crowd of white people heckle her. But what ever became of the people involved? David Margolick tracked them down, and wrote Elizabeth and Hazel, a book about the two most prominent girls in the photo. In honor of MLK Day, Slate has re-published a short excerpt from the piece, which discusses what Hazel (the snarling young white girl in the picture) did with the rest of her life, and the strange relationship the two women formed in their later years.

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Who doesn’t know that face?

It’s the face of a white girl—she was only 15 years old, but everyone always thinks her older than that, and judges her accordingly—shouting at an equally familiar, iconic figure: a sole black school girl dressed immaculately in white, her mournful and frightened eyes hidden behind sunglasses, clutching her books and walking stoically away from Little Rock Central High School on Sept. 4, 1957—the date when, in many ways, desegregation first hit the South where it hurt.

Keep reading at Slate.

The Continuing Tragedy of Ferguson

“This was the epicenter of where people tried to grapple with race, and failed miserably.” Once unknown outside of Saint Louis County, the little municipality called Ferguson has become synonymous around the world with racial tension, protests, and what are sometimes violent clashes between civilians and police. But there were problems in Ferguson long before it burned. In this new piece by Nikole Hannah-Jones, published by ProPublica in conjunction with the New York Times, readers are led through the complicated racial politics of Saint Louis, essentially going from the Dred Scott decision  up until the present. Using a combination of newspapers, government studies, videos, radio segments, and interviews, Hannah-Jones presents the clearest and most thorough explanation of how Saint Louis became so divided that I have yet encountered. And her story all arises from one simple question: If Mike Brown hadn’t been killed on that August afternoon, what sort of life might he have had?

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The scoreboard for the Normandy High School football field can be seen from St. Peter’s Cemetery, where Michael Brown Jr. is buried. (Photo © Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

ON AUGUST 1, FIVE BLACK STUDENTS in satiny green and red robes and mortar boards waited inside an elementary school classroom, listening for their names to be called as graduates of Normandy High School. The ceremony was held months after the school’s main graduation for students who had been short of credits or had opted not to participate earlier.

One of those graduating that day was Michael Brown. He was 18, his mother’s oldest son. He was headed to college in the fall.

Eight days later, Brown was dead. News reports in the days after Brown’s death often noted his recent graduation and college ambitions, the clear implication that the teen’s school achievements only deepened the sorrow over his loss.

But if Brown’s educational experience was a success story, it was a damning one.

Read the full story at ProPublica.

Dr. Huxtable & Mr. Hyde

The curious case of Bill Cosby, black America, and the dark accusations of 13 different women. If you hadn’t heard of Cosby’s alleged dark side before this past week, chances are you know about it now. In the early 2000’s, Cosby went on a “call-out tour,” traveling to some of the nation’s most destitute cities to talk with their residents about the reasons many of them remain trapped in poverty. The tour was harshly criticized at the time, though it’s mostly been forgotten. During this same period, a number of women began accusing Cosby of having drugged and sexually assaulted them. Again, it got some press coverage at the time, but faded from view. But the whole question of Cosby’s dark side has resurfaced, due largely to the horrendous PR move to “meme” Cosby on Twitter. As we’re forced to re-examine the man, who had been so widely-admired, this 2006 essay by Robert Huber in Philadelphia Magazine provides useful insight into Cosby’s story from the midst of his infamous tour. It has broad implications about race and sexual violence, but also about the cult of celebrity, storytelling, and maybe even reality.

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Illustration by PJ Loughran

“He did a lot of good works behind which he could stash his crimes of excess.” — Tamara Green

Our stories must be told a certain way. That is why Bill Cosby is holed up, on a hot late-April afternoon, in a convention center in Greenwood, Mississippi. There are maybe 300 folks, overwhelmingly black, in a hall that seats several thousand, where Cosby has come to “call out” to the community, to talk direct and tough. To get the folks to believe that if they want the mess of their lives to change, they’ve got to do it themselves, and stop thinking and acting like victims. He is prancing back and forth in sweatpants and a pullover, diving into the sparse audience to ask questions and make demands, but also flirting with that wide elastic face of his — of course, the crowd is easily his.

“Those of you who are living with someone on drugs,” he tells them, “you don’t even hide your stuff anymore, because they know where to look.” Cosby mugs the foolish ignorance — “How did she know to look in the washing machine for the money?” — and gets titters of recognition, but he isn’t fooling around.

After the call-out, Cosby sits in a private room, alone with one woman.

Keep reading at Philadelphia Magazine.