Filem ini menjadi penuh kontroversi atas penampilan watak-watak berkulit hitam ia sebagai berperwatakan ganas (dilakonkan banyak pelakon berkulit putih dalam solekan khas) serta bernafsu buas terhadap wanita, serta menggambarkan Ku Klux Klan - sebuah kelompok pemerjuang ketuanan kulit putih - sebagai wira,[5][6] malah penayangan filem ini menjadi antara faktor penting dalam penaikkan nama serta pembentukan semula kelompom tersebut pada tahun 1915. Terdapat banyak tunjuk perasaan dalam golongan masyarakat kulit hitam terhadap penayangan filem dini di serata Amerika Syarikat.[7]
^Hall, Sheldon; Neale, Stephen (2010). Epics, spectacles, and blockbusters: a Hollywood history. Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television. Wayne State University Press. m/s. 270 (note 2.78). ISBN978-0-8143-3697-7. In common with most film historians, he estimates that The Birth of Nation cost "just a little more than $100,000" to produce...
Addams, Jane, in Crisis: A Record of Darker Races, X (May 1915), 19, 41, and (June 1915), 88.
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1973).
Brodie, Fawn M.Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (New York, 1959), p. 86–93. Corrects the historical record as to Dixon's false representation of Stevens in this film with regard to his racial views and relations with his housekeeper.
Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: 1965), p. 30 *Cook, Raymond Allen. Fire from the Flint: The Amazing Careers of Thomas Dixon (Winston-Salem, N.C., 1968).
Franklin, John Hope. "Silent Cinema as Historical Mythmaker". InMyth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume II. 1997. Gerster, Patrick, and Cords, Nicholas. (editors.) Brandywine Press, St. James, NY. ISBN978-1-881089-97-1
Franklin, John Hope, "Propaganda as History" pp. 10–23 in Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988 (Louisiana State University Press, 1989); first published in The Massachusetts Review, 1979. Describes the history of the novel The Clan and this film.
Franklin, John Hope, Reconstruction After the Civil War (Chicago, 1961), p. 5–7.
Hickman, Roger. Reel Music: Exploring 100 Years of Film Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006).
Hodapp, Christopher L., and Alice Von Kannon, Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008) p. 235–6.
Korngold, Ralph, Thaddeus Stevens. A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great (New York: 1955) pp. 72–76. corrects Dixon's false characterization of Stevens' racial views and of his dealings with his housekeeper.
Leab, Daniel J., From Sambo to Superspade (Boston, 1975), p. 23–39.
New York Times, roundup of reviews of this film, March 7, 1915.
The New Republica, II (March 20, 1915), 185
Poole, W. Scott, Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting (Waco, Texas: Baylor, 2011), 30. ISBN978-1-60258-314-6
Simkins, Francis B., "New Viewpoints of Southern Reconstruction", Journal of Southern History, V (February, 1939), pp. 49–61.
Stokes, Melvyn (2007), D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation: A History of "The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time", New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN0-19-804436-4. The latest study of the film's making and subsequent career.
Williamson, Joel, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1965). This book corrects Dixon's false reporting of Reconstruction, as shown in his novel, his play and this film.