When the Confederate flag flew in Seattle

Gone with the wind before, other works were shown in Seattle aimed at reformulating the mindsets and history of the post-war era. Margaret Mitchell was inspired by the books of the author Thomas Dixon Jr., including The Clansman, the stage version of which premiered in Seattle at the Moore Theater in October 1908. The book and play made heroes of the Ku Klux Klan, and black characters played by whites appeared as stereotypes in blackface. “The Ku Klux on stage,” announced the PI before the play opened.

The show has been turned down in many cities where it was played. Members of the Seattle black community tried to stop their staging here, but were prevented from depositing a $ 1,000 bond “to compensate The Clansman for losses,” reported the Seattle Star. It was apparently too much for the opponents to raise. Protests outside the theater sparked a strong reaction from the police chief: He warned, according to Star, that the demonstrators would be met by “a large number of uniformed police officers”.

“There won’t be any trouble,” promised the boss.

Horace Cayton, Jr., editor of the Seattle Republican, the city’s most successful black-run newspaper, contributed to the arrival of the Clansman drama on the west coast. Cayton, born a slave, was married to and ran his newspaper to Susie Revels Cayton, whose father Hiram Revels of Mississippi was the first black US Senator and a reconstruction icon.

“There is no doubt that the piece … encourages, even provokes color phobia in its most formidable form and should not be shown at an exhibition in any civilized country,” wrote Cayton.

Still, banning production if the majority of a city wanted to see it would result in “free advertising,” he concluded.

The Seattle Times “drama department” appeared to agree. They refused to review The Clansman during its successful run. Upon completion of the play, the newspaper declared it “unclean” and “utterly degrading” and called the subject “repugnant”. A review, so the paper, would only have sparked controversy that would have filled “unclean coffers”.

The PI, on the other hand, had no problem hype the piece. In one report, he wrote that it “depicts the days when courage, self-sacrifice, and heroic deeds removed the fetters that held the South in bondage after the war between states.” In other words, the Confederate States were the victims, not the perpetrators, and this postwar life was tough until the Ku Klux Klan restored order and freed whites from “bondage”.

Works extolling the virtues of the Confederation didn’t stop there. Seven years later, in 1915, The Clansman was the basis for a cinematic blockbuster that soon hit Seattle. DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation opened this year at the Clemmer Theater (“Seattle’s Best Photo Playhouse”), located on Second Avenue between Pike and Union Streets downtown. When The Clansman was popular, Birth of a Nation helped usher in a new era of powerful cinema that promoted white supremacy with technically impressive film innovations. Not only was it a box office hit, but it also contributed to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which swept through the northern states including Washington and Oregon in the 1920s.