The Traitor Within (1923 film)

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The Traitor Within is a 1923 film promoting the Ku Klux Klan. The Toll of Justice was another Klan film made the same year. [1]

The films succeeded the popular and influential 1915 D. W. Griffith film The Birth of a Nation . [2] British film studies scholar and author Tom Rice wrote about the film in his book White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan (2015). [3]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ku Klux Klan</span> American white supremacist terrorist hate group

The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. According to historian Fergus Bordewich, the Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets at various times have been African Americans, as well as Jews and Catholics.

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The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865–1900 is the first novel of Thomas Dixon's Reconstruction trilogy, and was followed by The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), and The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907). In the novel, published in 1902, Dixon offers an account of Reconstruction in which he portrays a Reconstruction leader, Northern carpetbaggers, and emancipated slaves as the villains; Ku Klux Klan members are anti-heroes. While the playbills and program for The Birth of a Nation claimed The Leopard's Spots as a source in addition to The Clansman, recent scholars do not accept this.

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The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan is a novel published in 1905, the second work in the Ku Klux Klan trilogy by Thomas Dixon Jr.. Chronicling the American Civil War and Reconstruction era from a pro-Confederate perspective, it presents the Ku Klux Klan heroically. The novel was adapted first by the author as a highly successful play entitled The Clansman (1905), and a decade later by D. W. Griffith in the 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation.

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Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), also known as Women's Ku Klux Klan, and Ladies of the Invisible Empire, held to many of the same political and social ideas of the KKK but functioned as a separate branch of the national organization with their own actions and ideas. While most women focused on the moral, civic, and educational agendas of the Klan, they also had considerable involvement in issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and religion. The women of the WKKK fought for educational and social reforms like other Progressive reformers but with extreme racism and intolerance.

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<i>The Traitor</i> (Dixon novel) 1907 novel by Thomas Dixon Jr

The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire is a 1907 novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. It is the third part in a trilogy about the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. The two previous installments were The Leopard's Spots, published in 1902, and The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, published in 1905.

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Daryl Davis is an American R&B and blues musician and activist. His efforts to fight racism by engaging members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) have convinced dozens of Klansmen to leave and denounce the KKK. Known for his energetic style of boogie-woogie piano, Davis has played with such musicians as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, B. B. King, and Bruce Hornsby.

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The Colonial Film Unit (C.F.U) was a propaganda and educational film production organization of the British government. It produced films for various British colonies including British Guiana and Nigeria. The Jamaica Film Unit was a division for films produced in Jamaica. The Colonial Film Unit was established in 1939 and produced 200 films before being shut down in 1955. It was part of Britain's Ministry of Information. It produced a magazine titled Colonial Cinema. Training filmmakers was also an important part of the unit's activities.

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The White Caps is a 1905 American silent drama film, directed by Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter showing how a man abusing his wife is punished by a group of white-hooded men. It is one of the first American films exposing conjugal violence against women and showing the action of vigilante groups.

Thomas William Templeman Rice, is a British film studies scholar, film historian, educator, author, and researcher. He is a senior lecturer on film studies at the University of St Andrews in St Andrews, Scotland. Rice has written numerous articles and two books, one book is about Ku Klux Klan films, and the other book is about the British Empire's Colonial Film Unit.

References

  1. Rice, Tom (December 13, 2008). ""The True Story of the Ku Klux Klan": Defining the Klan through Film". Journal of American Studies. 42 (3): 471–488. doi:10.1017/S0021875808005537. S2CID   146796962 via Cambridge University Press.
  2. Rice, Tom (December 11, 2015). "How the Ku Klux Klan Used Cinema to Become a Force in America". The New Republic.
  3. Pegram, Thomas R. (2016). "White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan". Civil War Book Review. 18 (2). doi: 10.31390/cwbr.18.2.19 .

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