Wilson enjoyed the first-ever film screening at the White House, and the selection was a stark symbol of his ideas about race. The 1915 film was Hollywood’s first feature-length studio production, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’s popular novel The Clansmen. The film signaled the birth of Hollywood and of the motion-picture industry in the United States. It became the newest visual medium by which to circulate racist ideas, eclipsing the fading minstrel shows.
