{"id":22039,"date":"2017-02-07T19:05:28","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T19:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colorlines.madeostudio.com\/article\/watch-william-monroe-trotter-fights-dw-griffiths-film-birth-movement\/"},"modified":"2017-02-07T19:05:28","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T19:05:28","slug":"watch-william-monroe-trotter-fights-dw-griffiths-film-birth-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/article\/watch-william-monroe-trotter-fights-dw-griffiths-film-birth-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: William Monroe Trotter Fights D.W. Griffith’s Film in ‘ Birth of a Movement’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WATCH: William Monroe Trotter Fights D.W. Griffith’s Film in ‘ Birth of a Movement’<\/h3>\n

\n By Sameer Rao<\/span> Feb 07, 2017<\/span>\n <\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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William Monroe Trotter’s fight to keep D.W. Griffith’s infamous 1915 film, \"The Birth of a Nation<\/a>,\" out of theaters forms the basis of the documentary, \"Birth of a Movement<\/a>.\"<\/p>\n

PBS aired the documentary last night (February 6) as part of its \"Independent Lens\" series. The hour-long film depicts Trotter<\/a>, a Black, Boston-based newspaper editor and activist who organized protests against Griffith’s Ku Klux Klan-celebrating movie and sought to have it banned in his city.<\/p>\n

One action depicted in \"Birth of a Movement\" involves Trotter leading a group of local NAACP members to see Griffith’s movie at a theater that did not sell tickets to Black people. When Trotter tried to purchase tickets in the lobby, a plainclothes police officer punched and arrested him. News of his arrest, combined with subsequent actions and speeches, galvanized support to ban \"The Birth of a Nation\" in Boston and beyond. <\/p>\n

Susan Grey and Bestor Cram (\"Circus Without Borders<\/a>\") co-directed and produced \"Birth of a Movement.\" The documentary features contributions from Henry Louis Gates Jr., Reginald Hudlin<\/a>, Spike Lee<\/a> and DJ Spooky (who previously composed a remix<\/a> and new score of Griffith’s film). Watch \"Birth of a Movement\" in full above courtesy of PBS.com, where it will stream for free through March 9.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n

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\n Archive<\/a>Arts & Culture<\/a>Birth Of A Movement<\/a>D.W. Griffith<\/a>History<\/a>History<\/a>Independent Lens<\/a>PBS<\/a>The Birth of a Nation<\/a>William Monroe Trotter<\/a> <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The documentary about Trotter, a Black newspaper editor and activist who fought to ban “The Birth of a Nation” in 1910s Boston, is now available to stream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_gspb_post_css":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[16402,16412,2071,3989,6618,16415,7008,11189,14351,16043],"article-type":[],"topic-meta":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22039"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-type?post=22039"},{"taxonomy":"topic-meta","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic-meta?post=22039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}