Griffith directed and produced "The Clansman" through Reliance-Majestic Studios in 1915, which became known as "The Birth of a Nation" and is considered one of the early feature length American films. The film was a success, but it aroused much controversy due to its depiction of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and race relations in the American Civil War and the reconstruction era of the United States. It was based on Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel "The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan"; it depicts Southern slavery as benign, the enfranchisement of freedmen as a corrupt plot by the Republican Party, and the Ku Klux Klan as a band of heroes restoring the rightful order. This view of the era was popular at the time and was endorsed for decades by historians of the Dunning School, although it met with strong criticism from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other groups.