# "Without Adverse Criticism": a 1916 Allentown advertisement for The Birth of a Nation A Lyric Theatre advertisement in The Allentown Leader of 18 March 1916 sells D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation with attendance figures, production costs, and the "wild ride of the Ku Klux Klans." - Home - Archive - "Without Adverse Criticism": a 1916 Allentown advertisement for The Birth of a Nation 'The Great American Play at Last!' The Birth of a Nation, Lyric Theatre advertisement (Allentown, 1916) "Without Adverse Criticism": a 1916 Allentown advertisement for The Birth of a Nation A March 1916 Allentown newspaper ad sells The Birth of a Nation with run counts, a $500,000 budget, and the "wild ride of the Ku Klux Klans." Public ## Techniques named on the archive record Bandwagon DateMarch 18, 1916Made byLyric Theatre, Allentown, Pennsylvania (W. D. Fitzgerald, manager)MediumAdvertisementCountryUnited StatesRegimeWilson AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceWikimedia Commons , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (US newspaper advertisement published 1916; Commons PD-US) The Allentown Leader, 18 March 1916, via Wikimedia Commons Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records. Full record at propagandaarchive.org A Lyric Theatre advertisement in The Allentown Leader of 18 March 1916 sells D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation with attendance figures, production costs, and the "wild ride of the Ku Klux Klans." ## What the ad prints The advertisement is a wall of numbers. Columns list the size of the cast, the horses, the months of production, the cost, the orchestra, and the length of the run in four cities, before the film's title appears. Below it, four lines say what the audience will see. Excerpts from the FRAME transcription: The Great American Play at Last! D. W. GRIFFITH'S EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD [...] 830 Consecutive Performances in N. Y. 400 Times in Chicago 300 Times in Boston 200 Times in Philadelphia THE BIRTH OF A NATION [...] WILD RIDE OF THE KU KLUX KLANS. 20 Million People Have Seen It Without Adverse Criticism Excerpts from the transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. Content note: the ad promotes a film that makes heroes of the Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan, and lists the Klan's ride as an attraction. ## Who placed it The Lyric Theatre in Allentown, Pennsylvania, under manager W. D. Fitzgerald, placed the ad in The Allentown Leader of 18 March 1916. It announces a return engagement for the week starting Monday, 27 March, with matinees every day and prices from 25 cents in the gallery to a dollar on the lower floor. The archive took the scan from Wikimedia Commons on 2 October 2026 and records it as public domain. ## How to read it The figures argue by crowd. If twenty million people have seen it, the reader is invited to stop asking whether it is true. The ad also tells the reader there was no objection at all, and offers nothing to support that. Its billing of the Klan's ride as a thrill, set among burning cities and the Lincoln assassination, sells a terror organization as entertainment. The film was speech, and the remedy for a lie told in a theater is a truer account told in public. That answer requires people to make it. The site's case study A hooded order paid its salesmen by the head quotes this ad and records that the founder of the 1915 Klan expected the film's premiere to give his order a boost, and it follows the NAACP's work against the revived Klan. Related pages: the Klan's own Imperial Night-Hawk, and the Wilson administration essay. ## Sources - FRAME object record, "'The Great American Play at Last!' The Birth of a Nation, Lyric Theatre advertisement (Allentown, 1916)." Lyric Theatre, Allentown, Pennsylvania (W. D. Fitzgerald, manager). The Allentown Leader, 18 March 1916, via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (US newspaper advertisement published 1916; Commons PD-US). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/birth-of-a-nation-lyric-ad-1916/