The Birth of a Nation

“The Fiery Cross of the Ku Klux Klan!”

Two families, the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons, are tied together by friendship before the Civil War pulls them to opposite sides. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall) is captured in battle, the nurse Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish) petitions for his pardon. D.W. Griffith adapted Thomas Dixon Jr.'s novel The Clansman, and the film follows Ben into Reconstruction-era South Carolina, where he founds the Ku Klux Klan.