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Contrary to popular perception Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves in the North through the Emancipation Proclamation; it only targeted Confederate states in rebellion. It exempted loyal Union border states and Northern areas already under Union control, as slavery was legally protected under the Constitution there until the 13th Amendment was ratified in late 1865.
Griffith makes it clear in his introductory titles to Part Two of THE BIRTH OF A NATION that the Negro was not at fault.
Booker T. Washington in his UP FROM SLAVERY (published in 1901) makes it clear the North gave power to a people largely unprepared for it.
This will not stop the wilfully ignorant.
Robert Grau, in PICTURE PLAY WEEKLY, confirms that Griffith’s ideas were rejected from the get go.
When it became clear that some were blaming a people who were in fact blameless a short film created not by Griffith but by THE HAMPTON INSTITUTE which showed the advances made since THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD was added to the program. This film is not included with any of the current restorations of THE BIRTH OF A NATION. It is presumed lost.
I do my homework largely because I love learning. In preparing my compositional sound collage for THE BIRTH I brought to Toronto Bernard B. Brown who, at 16, had played first violin in the orchestra at Clune’s Auditorium where the picture was first seen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_B._Brown

No one on earth has dug as deep as I dug. I’m still digging.

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