Alan Griffith's The Ku Klux Klan

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In Griffith’s version of the postwar era, all blacks who aren’t “faithful souls” team up with carpetbaggers from the North to loot, pillage, and degrade the time-honored traditions of Southern culture. Stoneman, a champion of black equality in the South, forces Senator Charles Sumner (a historical figure) to acknowledge the legitimacy of Stoneman’s mulatto protégé, Silas Lynch, who secretly lusts after Elsie and is sent down to organize the emancipated slaves. Headquartered in Piedmont, Lynch instigates former slaves to rise up against Southern whites in vengeance, teams effectively with the carpetbaggers, and essentially oversees mob rule. Stoneman, in ill health, visits, bringing Elsie with him. Ben refuses to shake Lynch’s hand. The two…show more content…
The Ku Klux Klan is born. Southern women secretly make hundreds of thousands of uniforms bearing a woven St. Andrews Cross, and the “Night Riders” start a new war against Lynch’s militia. Ben’s involvement in the Klan crushes Elsie, but she does not sell him out. Flora consoles Elsie and then skips off into the woods to fetch water from a spring. There, Gus, a newly promoted black officer, approaches Flora and proffers marriage. Flora slaps him, and Gus begins to chase her through the forest. Ben follows behind in search of Flora, having been told of her errand. Gus reassures Flora that he intends her no harm, but Flora finds herself pinned on the edge of a cliff. Threatening to jump rather than be touched by Gus, she either accidentally falls or intentionally jumps off the cliff, where shortly after she dies in Ben’s arms. A search commences for the fearful Gus. After a complex chase sequence, the Klan eventually catches Gus and lynches him. They dump his body at Silas Lynch’s

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