Birth of a Nation is based on the book The Clansmen by Thomas Dixon Jr. The film portrays the Clansmen as the heroes of the story. Some years after the film was made, the Klu Klux Klan used it as a recruiting tool. In Birth of a Nation, the African-American men are portrayed as the villains of the story. The casting for the leader of the African-Americans was a white male who sported black-face to become the character. I think that Oscar Micheaux created the film Within our Gates as a political and racial stand against the racist hate that the African-Americans suffered due to Birth on a Nation. Micheaux's flim was created for his people, an article from Public Domain Review comments- "these films were purposefully made for an all-black audience, featured black actors, and became important arenas through which representations of African-Americans in mass culture were contested"
The sequel to D. W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation was Fall of a Nation directed by Thomas Dixon, Jr. But D.W. Griffiths did make a film, Intolerance as a response to his previous film.
References
Unknown Author, (Unknown Date) Within our gates (1920) Retrieved from https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/within-our-gates-1920/
Lehr, D. & Pfeiffer, L. (2019) The Birth of a Nation Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Birth-of-a-Nation
Pfeiffer, L. (2019) Intolerance Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Intolerance-film-by-Griffith
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