1. The Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith (film, 1915)
Racist, “Lost Cause,” Klan-glorifying propaganda, it was also the birth of modern filmmaking. “Thoroughly pernicious, but tremendously important … establishing the importance of film and helping to shape national consciousness about Reconstruction,” said University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson.
T-2. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (poetry, 1855)
“Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves,” Whitman wrote in the preface to the first edition of this landmark poetry collection. He repeatedly expanded and revised the work until he died in 1892.
T-2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (novel, 1852)
Stowe’s slavery-condemnation novel sold more copies than any book in the nineteenth century, save perhaps the Bible. Credited with changing white attitudes toward slavery, it’s nevertheless not widely read today, due to its negative stereotypes of Black Americans, particularly that of the title character.
T-4. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (novel, 1885)
Ernest Hemingway said all modern American literature comes from Twain’s antebellum tale of a white Missouri preteen helping a slave find freedom. It was and remains controversial, but by this time in his life, Samuel Clemens was a staunch supporter of racial justice.
