|
D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), the tale of a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, has been called "the first, the most stunning and durably audacious of all American film masterpieces" by critic Arlene Croce. It is also used as a Ku Klux Klan recruiting film.
|
|
|
|
--This excerpt from "The Prioress' Tale" in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400), one of the earliest masterpieces of English literature, is an example of an anti-Semitic blood libel, a story of a Christian child murdered by Jews. Such stories have been used to justify anti-Semitic acts from Chaucer's time to the present.
|
 But our first enemy -- the serpent Satan who has built his wasp's nest in every Jewish heart -- swelled up in wrath and cried: "Alas, O people of the Jews! Does it seem right to you that a boy like this should wander where he likes and show his contempt by singing songs which insult your faith?" And from then on the Jews conspired together to hunt the innocent child out of this world. For this they hired a murderer, a man who had a secret hide-out in an alley. As the child passed by, this vile Jew seized firm hold of him, cut his throat and threw him in a pit. Yes, they threw him in a cesspit where the Jews purged their bowels. Yet what may your malice profit you, O you damnable race of new Herods? Murder will out, that's certain; and especially where the glory of God shall be increased. The blood cried out upon your fiendish crime.
|
Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was the beloved and honored author/illustrator of more than 40 children's books. Recently hundreds of editorial cartoons drawn by Geisel in the 1940s have been published. The great majority of these cartoons were anti-fascist and called for U.S. participation in World War II. Several cartoons by Geisel, including this one, published on February 13, 1942, in PM Magazine, characterize Japanese Americans as disloyal collaborators and use stereotypical facial features. The legend above the image reads, "Waiting for the Signal From Home..." During WWII some Japanese American U.S. citizens who had not been charged with any crime were held in internment camps.
|
|
Home | Site Map
