American Economic Review Vol. 113 No. 6 2023
The Birth of a Nation:Media and Racial Hate
Abstract
This paper documents the impact of popular media on racial hate by examining the first American blockbuster: 1915’s The Birth of a Nation, a fictional portrayal of the KKK’s founding rife with racist stereotypes. Exploiting the film’s five-year “road show,” I find a sharp spike in lynchings and race riots coinciding with its arrival in a county. Instrumenting for road show destinations using the location of theaters prior to the movie’s release, I show that the film significantly increased local Klan support in the 1920s. Road show counties continue to experience higher rates of hate crimes and hate groups a century later.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20201867
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1424-1460
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref