The co-founder and president of Buffalo's Uncrowded Queens Institute has made a historic discovery. It involves her extensive research over the most controversial film from 1915 Birth of a Nation. WBFO's Eileen Buckley met with Peggy Brooks-Bertram to discuss her work that refutes the racist film.
The 100-year-old film Birth of a Nation has remained highly controversial. The silent film displays racists scenes of clansmen and violence. Brooks-Bertram has been conducting extensive research. She's been invited to appear in London later this month before an academic film group.
"I have the only existing copy of it," stated Peggy Brooks-Bertram, Co-Founder & President of Buffalo's Uncrowded Queens Institute.
Drusilla Dunjee Houston
Credit Photo from the Research Division Oklahoma History Society
"The major discovery I made really was that there was an African American woman in Oklahoma who actually wrote a screenplay to refute Birth of a Nation, the film by Thomas Dixon and DW Griffith," said Brooks-Bertram. "The woman that I've been writing about and researching is Drusilla Dunjee Houston and she was the person who responded to him across his whole career of writing these materials."
Brooks-Bertram obtained the screenplay from a descendent of Dunjee Houston. She discovered a woman who said her aunt was Dunjee Houston. "I have the only existing copy of it," stated Brooks-Bertram.