[Daithi]

D.W. Griffith is often referred to as the "Father of Film" because he was the director that popularized many of the editing techniques used in producing films (e.g. fades, dissolves, cross-cuts, close-ups, etc.) He is unquestionably Hollywood's first great director.

The Directors Guild of America's most prestigious award is the D.W. Griffith award, but in 1999 they removed his name from the award because it is believed that Griffith was a racist.

The reason for this is because Griffith had made a film called The Birth of a Nation (1915) that depicted the Civil War from the Southern Point of view. In particular, it showed the Klu Klux Klan protecting southerners from opportunisitic Northeners (i.e. carpetbaggers) and their southern supporters (i.e. scalawags).

The thought that anyone could defend the clan or racism was enough to have Griffith's name stripped from the award that had been created in his honor.

The fact that Griffith also produced Intollerance (1916), another of the silent era's greatest films that condemned all forms of intollerance no matter skin color was immaterial. So was the fact that he also produced Broken Blossoms (1919) that was probably the first film to ever to depict an inter-racial romance (especially from a sympathetic point of view). This film told the story of a Chinese man that falls in love with a white girl, and when he told this story in 1919 much of America found the thought of a "yellow-man" with a white girl to be completely unacceptable. Griffith's first sound film also happened to be "Abraham Lincoln" and it focused on Lincoln's unwavering determination to preserve the Union.

In 2002 the DGA put Griffith's name back on the award.