{"id":19951,"date":"2020-02-20T13:39:14","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T21:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=19951"},"modified":"2023-09-29T10:57:37","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T17:57:37","slug":"as-american-as-the-blues-lynching-in-film-and-tv","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/as-american-as-the-blues-lynching-in-film-and-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"As American as the Blues: Lynching in Film and TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ade Adeniji<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Always in Season<\/i><\/strong><\/a> explores the history of lynching through the mysterious 2014 death of Lennon Lacy while also looking at historical reenactments of lynching, prompting some to question the value of conjuring up the past. The specter of lynching, though, has been depicted in American popular culture for decades, including in film and television. And while one might be tempted to argue that these portrayals have evolved straightforwardly as black Americans attained more full-fledged citizenship, depictions of lynching have often been layered and complicated, even during less progressive eras.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In D.W. Griffith\u2019s <\/span>Birth of a Nation<\/strong> (1916), <\/span><\/i>a <\/span>sexually rapacious black captain<\/span> Gus (played by a white actor in blackface) is lynched by the Klan after trying to marry a white woman named Flora, who would rather plunge to her death than elope with him. Griffith casts the Klan as heroes and blacks, including black soldiers and statesmen during Reconstruction, as the villains. On the heels of the film, the KKK resurged and along with it, racial terror inflicted upon black Americans.\u00a0National membership in the Klan peaked at about 4.5 million a few years later. However, even back then, there was pushback against the film<\/a>, with the NAACP attempting to ban it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n