Boston Common Protest of “Birth of a Nation,” 1915

Photographs

1915

Brown Digital Repository, Brown University Library

Black and white photograph of a large crowd in the park. The park is the background, with lines of benches and many trees. The trees have all lost their leaves and the ground has a soft dusting of snow on it. Behind the park, you can see multi-story Boston buildings. The crowd of people takes up a little bit over the bottom half of the photograph, and extends beyond the left, right, and bottom boundaries of the image. The crowd is made up of men and women, Black people and white people. They are all wearing winter clothes and hats of many different kinds. There is one man standing above the rest in the middle of the crowd.

Trotter organized a mass protest on Boston Common on May 2, 1915 to rally African American opposition to The Birth of a Nation and pressure legislators to reform the state's censorship law.

Mass protest taking place on Boston Common, May 2, 1915, to protest the film The Birth of a Nation.

William Monroe Trotter

Demonstration

Legislation

Words

Photographs