The Democrats have evolved into modern day slavery of blacks by keeping them held down in the projects.
-Geaux
--------
Did you know that the Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, founded the KKK, and fought against every major civil rights act in U.S. history? Watch as Carol Swain, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, shares the inconvenient history of the Democratic Party.
The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party
Oh look --- it's the original bridge-buyer, here to explain how the Democratic Party held an annual convention on trolley tracks in Madison Wisconsin. Maybe he can explain "Forney Johnston" as well. He's only had a week and a half to work on it.
Whatcha come up with?
And look --- he's trotting in more myths, including my favorite, "founded the KKK". Nope, they did not.
1865:
- (Maj) James Crowe
- Calvin Jones
- (Capt) John Lester
- (Capt) John B Kenedy
- Frank O. McCord
- Richard Reed
1915 re-founding:
--- find me any political affiliation for any of those people.
Maybe look under the trolley tracks in Madison Wisconsin
Or maybe "Forney Johnston" knows.
You can also check
post 64 here, where another kkklown history revisionist tried to slap this same myth against the wall hoping it would stick despite known history. Which is linked an imaged there.
Here's some followup --- not the recent post I remember but this site doesn't make search easy. One could go find the links all over again but then the bogus Wilson quote wasn't my claim and there are plenty more myths to squash...
== (old post, repasted) ==
There is evidence of the "writing history with lightning" phrase, but it's referring to the medium of the motion picture ---- in which "Birth of a Nation" was, sadly, technically innovative, completely aside from its plot. It made the splash it did for
both of those reasons --- not just the storyline.
The bit about "my only regret is that it's all so terribly true" might have been advertising copy that D.W. Griffith used to sell the film, attributing it to a "very eminent man" but not naming the source*. In effect, Griffith (or Dixon, the novelist) seems to have made it up --- or somebody did at some later time.
From a 1915 advertising poster in Atlanta:
.
“History written with lightning” is the description applied to “The Birth of a Nation,” now in its second week at the Atlanta theater, by a very eminent man for whom a private exhibition was given in Washington some months ago.
--- so this seems to have been congealed into a fake quote many years later (it doesn't appear in print anywhere until 1937, and even then it's unattributed)
From the biography
Wilson: The New Freedom (1956) by Arthur S. Link:
>> Dixon conceived a bold scheme -- to arrange a private showing of the film at the White House and thereby to obtain the President’s implied endorsement.
[41]
Dixon bragged afterward that he had hidden "the real purpose of my film," which was to spread southern white racial attitudes in the North: "What I told the President was that I would show him the birth of a new art -- the launching of the mightiest engine for moulding public opinion in the history of the world."
23
Wilson fell into Dixon’s trap, as indeed, did also members of the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress. Then, when the N.A.A.C.P. sought to prevent the showing of “The Birth of a Nation” in New York, Boston, and other cities, Dixon’s lawyers countered successfully by declaring that Chief Justice had seen the movie and liked it immensely.
[42]
The Chief Justice, a Confederate veteran from Louisiana, put an end to the use of his name by threatening to denounce “The Birth of a Nation” publicly if Dixon did not stop saying that he had endorsed it. [43] Perceiving the political dangers in the situation, Tumulty suggested that Wilson write “some sort of a letter showing that he did not approve of the ‘Birth of a Nation.’”
[44] “I would like to do this,” the President replied, “if there were some way in which I could do it without seeming to be trying to meet the agitation . . . stirred up by that unspeakable fellow Tucker [Trotter].”
[45] He did, however, let Tumulty say that he had at no time approved the film; and three years later, when the nation was at war, he strongly disapproved the showing of this “unfortunate production.”
[46]
... How Wilson reacted is a matter of dispute.
Twenty-two years later, a magazine writer alleged that he had said about the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true". It is extremely doubtful that Wilson uttered these words, and Dixon did not quote them in his memoirs. Sixty-two years later, the last person then living who had been at the showing recalled that the president
did not seem to pay much attention to the movie and left when it was over without saying a word.
[41] Dixon tells the story in “Southern Horizons: An Autobiography,” unpublished MS. in the possession of Mrs. Thomas Dixon, Raleigh, North Carolina, pp. 423-424.
[42] For accounts of the hearings in New York and Boston, see Mrs. Walter Damrosch to J.P. Tumulty, March 27, 1915, Wilson Papers; Mrs. Harriet Beale to J.P. Tumulty, March 29, 1915,
ibid.; Representative Thomas C. Thacher of Massachusetts to J.P. Tumulty, April 17, 1915,
ibid. enclosing letters and documents relating to the hearing in Boston; and Thomas Dixon, “Southern Horizons,” pp. 425-441.
[43] E.D. White to J.P. Tumulty, April 5, 1915, Wilson Papers.
[44] J.P. Tumulty to W.W., April 24, 1915,
ibid.
[45] W.W. to J.P. Tumulty, c. April 25, 1915,
ibid.
[46] J.P. Tumulty to T.C. Thacher, April 28, 1915,
ibid.; W.W. to J.P. Tumulty, c. April 22, 1918,
ibid.<<
(from page 272
here)
So the quote does not even appear until 1937, long after Wilson's death, and appears to be amalgamated from D. W Griffith's advertising propaganda claiming "But 'The Birth of a Nation' received very high praise from high quarters in Washington. ... Yes, I was gratified when a man we all revere, or ought to, said it teaches history by lightning." (that's on page 21
here).
Notice he doesn't attribute a
name to this "man we all revere". The 1915 version of "some people say....".
Again, other than cleaning up bogus quotes I'm still unaware what this has to do with the topic or the Klan. First, the quote has no corroborated source and doesn't appear
anywhere until 1937. Second, what the quote would mean if it were real is open to debate anyway. "History written with lightning" is Dixon's filmmaker term describing the medium, and in the phrase "it is all so terribly true", what "it" refers to isn't even specified. "It's true what the Klan's motive was"? Or "it's terrible that it's true that all this went down?" It isn't specified.
So what's the point here with this Wilson myth?
Hell I still haven't figured out what this thread has to do with the 1924 Democratic convention, since it's using a picture from Wisconsin, what it's got to do with Forney Johnston, who was already dead by then, why "Liberals are not liking it" since it's got nothing to do with Liberalism, or in what way a widely-distributed photo from 1924 is somehow "newly discovered".
What is however interesting and relative to contemporary events is that The Birth of a Nation" is part and parcel, as was the Dixon novel
The Clansman on which it was based, of the same "
Lost Cause" movement that had been striving to rewrite the history of the Confederacy, a time of the peak of bigotry, Jim Crow laws, segregation, race riots and rampant lynchings, part of which movement was the erection of hundreds of statues and monuments dedicated to whitewashing that history, primarily by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), including most if not all of the statues and monuments currently under attack and in some cases already removed, from public spaces. And they were installed
in those public spaces specifically to led their historical revisionism an air of "legitimacy", just as "a man we all revere or ought to" was intended to lend THAT historical revisionism (the film) an air of legitimacy. All part of the same pattern from the same element driven for the same reason -- trying to whitewash the nefarious splotch of white supremacy.
is unimpressive.
