(FILM) GRIFFITH DW Birth of a Race

Sale 2377 - Lot 349

Price Realized: $ 531

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(FILM.) GRIFFITH, D.W. Birth of a Race. Pair of engraved stock certificates, with gold foil seal. 8-1/2 x 11 inches. Issued to Arthur C. Young (two $10 shares) and W.J. & Edward Fink(?) (16 shares) in the Birth of a Race Photoplay Corporation. Signed by the last President and Secretary of the year-old Corporation; the gold foil seal is worn and chipped, some offsetting on opposite side from seal; else fine. Chicago, 1918

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one of the last certificates issued, as the film premiered two months later. The Birth of a Race was a silent drama film originally conceived in 1917 by Booker T. Washington. as an African-American response to D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which extolled the Ku Klux Klan and painted African American as racist stereotypes. The production was eventually taken over by whites who cut much of the original 'Negro' footage and transformed the movie, by the time of its release just after the end of World War I, into a 'religious' German-American war story starring white actors. Nevertheless, it is considered by historians to be the genesis of independent Black cinema which inspired African-American filmmakers of the future.