"The Birth of a Nation" & The Civil War Films of D.W. Griffith (1915) — This DVD contains the original film + a 1930 sound introduction featuring Griffith + related materials, including New York vs. The Birth of a Nation: an archive of information documenting the battles over the films 1922 re-release, and excerpts from 1915 souvenir book and several original program. Griffith had made seven short films on the Civil War before he directed "The Birth of a Nation." They were: "In the Border States," "The House with Closed Shutters," "The Fugitive," "His Trust," "His Trust Fulfilled," "Swords and Hearts," "The Battle." All are on this DVD. In Assumption Library.

Robert Lang, ed., The Birth of a Nation (1994) contains the script + contemporary reviews + four scholarly essays. This is an indispensable resource.

The Man Who Invented Hollywood: The Autobiography of D.W. Griffith, A Memoir and Some Notes, edited and annotated by James Hart (Louisville, KY: Touchstone Publishing Company, 1972) — the autobiographical notes break off after the release of "The Birth of a Nation."

There are several biographies of Griffith: Robert M. Henderson, D.W. Griffith: His Life and Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972) and Richard Schickel, D.W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984)

Thomas Dixon, Jr., The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden -- 1865-1900 (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1902) — The first volume of Dixon's Klan Trilogy and, with the other volumes, the source of "The Birth of a Nation." It sold 200,000 copies in 1902. It is available online at the University of Virginia's Uncle Tom's Cabin site. One of the interesting ironies of this topic is that Dixon consciously sought to efface the image of the Old South created in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Yet Griffith drew upon Stowe's novel in making "The Birth of a Nation."

Thomas Dixon, Jr., The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan.(New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1905) — volume two of the trilogy and the immediate source for the film. It is available online at the Documenting the American South project at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Volume three, The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1907) is also available online at the same site as is a brief biography of Dixon.

A helpful discussion is Bruce Chadwick, The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).

For the efforts of the NAACP and other black organizations to boycott and/or protest the film, see: Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900 1942 (1977); Robert Sklar, Movie Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (1975); Michael Rogin, “‘The Sword Became a Flashing Vision’: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation” in Robert Lang, ed., The Birth of a Nation (1994), 250-93.