According to Dr. James Campbell, southern whites saw Reconstruction as a tragic era in which African-Americans who were ill-equipped for freedom were given political rights for which they weren't prepared. They perceived it as a decade of complete corruption, led by opportunistic, northern Carpetbaggers. In these southerners' eyes, order and decorum were restored with the so-called Southern Redemption, when they finally regained political control of their states. This interpretation drives the film Birth of a Nation, and was prevalent in textbooks through the 1940s and 50s. From the perspective of black people, of course, this era of increasingly legitimized racial violence was anything but redemption.