Themes in The Birth of a Nation

Additional Depictions of African-Americans in The Birth of a Nation

The action begins when the mammy leaves the house, rubs her eyes, and sees a black man standing on the sidewalk laughing after Union soldiers have taken the elder Cameron away. She rolls up her sleeves, walks up to the man and punches him in the face, sending him to the ground. After a few kicks at the fallen man, the intertitle appears: "The faithful souls take a hand."

When the loyal male servant, the "tom" counterpart to the Cameron's mammy who was recently beaten by black Union soldiers, hears the news from Mrs. Cameron, the duo leave the house in search of their master. As they exit the gate, the mammy takes another swing at the man she hit earlier and sends him to the ground again. After a few images of the Cameron women scurrying about the house in various stages of panic, the scene moves to the black plantation quarters where the elder Cameron has been taken in handcuffs.

There, authentic African-Americans (as opposed to white actors in blackface) taunt him. An intertitle appears: "Hoping to effect a rescue the faithful souls pretend to join the mockers" as the duo travels through town in search of their master. After the blacks get in a final jeer or two, Cameron is led out of the area. The Union soldiers escort him through town and to the cart where the the mammy and the male servant are waiting. They begin taunting him as well and the intertitle reads:

The Male Servant with his Master in Chains

As the male servant continues to mock Cameron, the mammy puts her hands on the shoulders of two Union soldiers and begins joking with them. The scene cuts between the male servant laughing at the white man in chains and the mammy laughing with the black soldiers. After putting her hands on their shoulders again, she looks over her own shoulder at her partner. The Cameron women are seen running down the street, near the place where the servants and soldiers are talking and laughing, and asking a white male if he has seen anything. The scene cuts between the male servant and the mammy one final time before the mammy knocks the soldiers' heads together and jumps on top of them. The male servant strikes the soldiers near him and leads Cameron onto the cart.

The scene then cuts again to the mammy holding the soldiers down and flailing her legs. The male servant helps her up as the Cameron women, hearing the commotion, run to the servants. The white male seen talking to the Cameron women pulls out his pistol and fires it into one of the Union soldiers. After a quick cut to a white female reacting to the gunshot, all of Cameron's saviors pile into the cart and flee the scene.

Proof of the loyalty of the two servants has never been required but this scene emphasizes the choice the "faithful souls" have made by contrasting them with the other black characters. Although the blacks in the plantations are loudest in their mockery of Cameron, they are not even granted a single voice in the form of an intertitle. Instead, that honor falls to the male servant who asks if he is this white man's equal. In having the singular voice, the servant demonstrates his ability to straddle the line between loyal servant and the belligerent black buck described by Donald Bogle. This ability to speak and act as if he were one of the blacks who hold Cameron in contempt, emphasizes the choice he has made when he chooses to save his master.

Both of these servants are certainly capable of rebelling against their master, or even to simply remain complacent as the soldiers carry him away but instead, they choose to act. They do not remain with the Cameron household because they do not have the opportunity to change their lot in life. Rather, they are deeply invested in the Cameron household and that sense overrides any racial loyalty that might exist. In the end, they are rewarded by both the Camerons, who gladly accept their commitment, and Griffith himself. Peter Noble acknowledges this directorial move in his essay, "The Negro in The Birth of a Nation,":

Time and again we are shown the "good niggers," the trusted and faithful Negro slaves who still cling devotedly to the Camerons through time of war and defeat, and hate the free North, preferring slavery in the South. No doubt at that period in the history of the USA these types of black retainers did in fact exist, but it was inevitable that Griffith concentrated all his patronizing sympathy upon the "Uncle Tom" characters while showing all other black men as vicious rebels and killers.⁽³⁾

In these two scenes, the loyalty of the servants has been demonstrated in a strict adherance to the white family, and more generally, the South. It is as if these servants' inability to identify and transcend regional differences on behalf of a sense of racial unity--the same merits required for the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and the transformation of the two white families--is what makes them so admirable. One repercussion of such a move is that, despite their loyalty, they are ultimately ineffectual by themselves. They cannot save their master alone. That requires the actions of a white male who appears in the right place at the right time. As usual, the mythology of black characters allows them to play crucial but clearly supporting roles.