ABSTRACT
Lexington police officers were directed by the Commissioner of Public Safety to sit amongst the audience to control ‘demonstrations’ and ‘enthusiastic outbursts’ when The Birth of a Nation (1915) played the city's opera house in early 1915, marking a curious conjuncture of film, highbrow culture and state authority (Waller, 1995, p 158). Likewise, police in Boston sought to prevent black people from buying tickets to the film when it played the Tremont Theatre, though the concern here was less about the audience's enthusiasm and more about their anger at the film's racism, and was consistent with a broader policing of racially bifurcated public space (Cripps, 1977, pp 59-60). Inside, Pinkerton detectives were scattered throughout the auditorium to stop demonstrations against the film like those that had taken place when the film was shown in the Liberty Theatre in New York City. Protestors had thrown eggs at the Liberty's screen at the moment when a black man was shown chasing a young white woman with the intention of raping her (New York Times, 15 April 1915, p 1; New York Times, 18 April 1915, p 15; see Mast, 1983, p 129). In other locations, the governmental policing of the film and of audiences led to the film being banned. Local censor boards, councils or mayors refused to allow the film to be seen in cities like Cleveland, Wilmington, Del, St Louis, Topeka, Louisville, and San Antonio (Fleener-Marzec, 1980, pp 66-73, 94-99). Likewise, the film was at least initially banned by state-wide authorities in Illinois, Michigan, Kansas and Ohio. 2 In Ohio, censors rejected the film in accordance with the remit of the state censor board established in 1913 that had granted the board authority to pass films of a ‘moral, educational or amusing and harmless character’ and to ban films that were ‘sacrilegious, obscene, indecent or immoral’. 3 The film was, they said, ‘not harmless’. 4 Epoch appealed, but the board restated their opinion that the film ‘was harmful and not of a harmless character’. 5
