The Face at Your Window -- September 20, 2021

Lakeland Evening Telegram, 22-September-1921

I was concerned when I came across ads for this movie. Was this another movie like Birth of a Nation where the Ku Klux Klan are the good guys? 

Moving Picture World, 24-September-1921

I was more concerned when I saw that the Klan staged a march to endorse the movie, which was showing at a theater in Atlanta.  

I dug around through some reviews and found that the movie was about labor and anti-immigrant issues. The recently organized American Legion comes in to cool down a strike, but the costume is troubling. 

Meanwhile, the Klan was going through a big revival, which encouraged and was encouraged by rerelease of DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation. This ad was for a showing at the Convention Hall in Tulsa, which ironically was a place where African American residents were herded while their neighborhood was being destroyed during the Tulsa Race Massacre a few months earlier:

http://cablecarguy.blogspot.com/2021/06/tulsa-race-massacre-100-day-2-june-1.html

Tulsa Race Massacre 100 -- May 31, 2021

 

Motion Picture News, 25-June-1921

100 years ago today, on 31-May-1921, a white mob in Tulsa, Oklahoma attacked the black-owned Greenwood District, destroying businesses, burning houses and killing people of color. The Tulsa Race Massacre may have been the worst single instance of racial violence in US history. These two theaters were among the businesses that were destroyed.

Read contemporary newspaper accounts of the massacre on my other blog:

https://cablecarguy.blogspot.com/2021/05/tulsa-race-massacre-100-may-31-2021.html

Film Daily, 08-June-1921