Illustration by Carlie Burton
Imagine John Lennon’s grandparents. Also imagine the grandparents of Paul, George, and Ringo, as we now get back to where we never belonged: Liverpool, England, in the year 1916. Get comfy, luv.
The Beatles’s grandparents have no idea that their descendants will someday dominate popular culture, but they don’t care—the biggest entertainment phenomenon is right down the road at Liverpool’s Olympia Theatre. It’s an American movie that’s become an international sensation, attracting record crowds everywhere.
Well, not quite everywhere. In Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, the most popular movie on Earth has been banned; theater owners face arrest if they dare show it. I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong: This film has absolutely no nudity or sexual themes. And yet no Cincinnati theater is allowed to book it. Why? What’s so dangerous?
If you haven’t guessed, the film is The Birth of a Nation, a three-hour epic tale of America’s Civil War and Reconstruction. More than a century after its release, people still argue whether everybody or nobody should see it. On one level, it’s universally praised as the greatest single advance in the history of filmmaking. Its innovations in directing and editing laid the foundation for everything that followed.
On another level, though, The Birth of a Nation is the most racist and repulsive story ever beamed onto a screen. The Civil War and its aftermath are shown from the South’s perspective, depicting freed slaves as crude stereotypes and the Ku Klux Klan as gallant saviors. Black characters gobble watermelon. Klan lynchings are heroic. You can see the problem. Unless you’re in Cincinnati, where you can’t see anything.
The entire state of Ohio outlawed the showing of The Birth of a Nation for two long years, claiming that the provocative scenes would spark race riots. Banning such a popular movie in 1916 is similar to—pretend this is technically possible—outlawing all Taylor Swift concerts, recordings, and videos in 2025. That’s exactly what people in Ohio faced as The Birth of a Nation took over the world.
Perhaps it’s occurred to you that people in Cincinnati had a secret advantage: the Ohio River. They could simply cross into Kentucky, where the movie never faced any serious opposition; its celebrated director, D.W. Griffith, was from Kentucky. Theaters in Covington and Newport obviously booked the movie right away so audiences from both sides of the river flocked to see it, right?
Before getting into why that didn’t happen, let’s remember two things about movies in 1916. First, they were silent; a live piano or organ was the only soundtrack. Second, there was no such thing as a nationwide release. New films typically premiered in larger cities and then slowly made their way around the country.
But nothing was typical about The Birth of a Nation. It was the world’s first epic blockbuster, featuring an enormous cast in sweeping battle scenes. It was first to have a complete music score performed in every theater by a live orchestra, plus a sound effects crew for additional excitement. This thing wasn’t so much a movie as a concert tour.
After the film premiered in Los Angeles and New York, about a dozen separate troupes of musicians and technicians hit the road and traversed the country. One such troupe reached our tri-state area in September 1915 and spent about a year moving through Kentucky and Indiana, but not Ohio. From the river to the lake, The Birth of a Nation was invisible. Cincinnati’s only choices were more than 30 miles away in Maysville, Kentucky, and Greensburg, Indiana—a serious distance for most people back then.
So why didn’t theaters in Northern Kentucky jump at the opportunity to book such a popular movie? Because it was physically impossible. Cincinnati so dominated this region for entertainment in those days that Covington and Newport hadn’t built theaters big enough for an orchestra, crew, and a flood of customers.
The Birth of a Nation didn’t—couldn’t—get a proper showing around here until the Ohio ban was lifted in early 1917. And then the dam broke. A one-week run at Cincinnati’s Grand Theatre turned into seven sold-out weeks. Until then, absolutely nobody inside Ohio saw the movie.
Well, maybe someone did. Circumstantial evidence suggests that on February 26, 1916—a full year before it was legal—the Cincinnati chapter of the Scottish Rite Masons smuggled The Birth of a Nation into Music Hall and showed it at the end of their week-long annual reunion.
Did that happen? Yes, according to a paragraph in The Cincinnati Enquirer. No, according to local records of the Masons. (I’ve been given private tours of Mason archives, and they keep everything.) Besides, obtaining a print of the film would have required knowing someone with connections. Maybe a fellow Mason with enough influence to adjust the traveling troupe’s itinerary. Like, say, D.W. Griffith.
By 1917, all the-cat-and mouse legal games were exhausted and The Birth of a Nation has been showing across Ohio without incident since then. Haha, you know I’m kidding, right? The state of Ohio banned the movie again when it was re-released for its 10th anniversary. But things were different by then: Covington had built The Strand, a theater big enough to handle the crew and the crowds. Northern Kentucky finally got the satisfaction of thumbing its nose at Cincinnati, drawing a large Ohio audience.
Today, The Birth of a Nation is in the public domain and viewable on YouTube. I won’t ask you to watch all three hours, but the final three minutes will give you a good sense of things: It’s Election Day, and the good guys (the KKK) are lined up on horseback, preventing the bad guys (some Black men who are obviously white actors in blackface) from voting. That “happy ending” is followed by a second one: The white South, restored to its rightful place of dominance, is gazed upon by a fade-in of Jesus, waving his blessing over this peaceful new world. Fade to black.
The Birth of a Nation returned to The Beatles’s hometown of Liverpool in 1966, just in time for the Ku Klux Klan to take aim at The Beatles themselves. John Lennon had recently (and stupidly) said, “We’re more popular than Jesus,” setting off a firestorm of anger that was especially strong in America’s Bible Belt. The Klan held a rally with a giant burning cross, using Beatles records as kindling. It didn’t work: The Fab Four played a concert at Crosley Field 10 days later.
D.W. Griffith’s movie didn’t work, either, at least not in the way he’d hoped. The Birth of a Nation is still widely praised for its contribution to cinematic art, but Griffith also dreamed of his “true story” having a lasting impact. Short term, it sparked the KKK revival of the 1920s and ’30s. Long term, it’s now regarded as the worst kind of racist propaganda dressed in a silk suit. Locally, Northern Kentucky University moved a statue of native son Griffith to a less prominent place in 1999.
After The Birth of a Nation, the next big milestone in cinema was the sound revolution, launched in 1927 by The Jazz Singer. That movie’s most memorable scene is the star singing in blackface. The following year saw another medium’s new innovation: radio’s first syndicated sitcom, Amos ‘n’ Andy, starring two white actors as dim-witted Black characters. Its theme song was the love theme from The Birth of a Nation.
The internet has more evidence of similar embarrassments from the era’s films, songs, and ads. Personally, I’m glad they’re easy to find. We should never forget how common and acceptable and relentless they were. I hope their visibility can help us keep celebrating their demise as we continue forward on our very long common road. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
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