The movie “Birth of a Nation,” with its laudatory depiction of the KKK and distorted portrayal of Black people, was controversial wherever it went and banned globally in some countries, states and cities. Many historians, scholars and academics agree the movie is inaccurate and misrepresentative of Black people and of African American history. It has been condemned as racist and fueling xenophobia. On December 18, 1915, the movie was advertised as coming to the Avenue Theatre in Vancouver. On that same day, the NCA’s letter of disapproval to Vancouver City Council, “Negro Residents Protest,” was published in Vancouver Daily World Letters to the Editor. The NCA’s letter made a vehement and principled case that the movie “is a gross misrepresentation of the negro character and is calculated to stir up bad feeling against them, consequently we must deplore its being shown, especially at a time when the colored races of any Empire are doing so much to help us in the great war crises.”
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