A large part of Griffith's legacy is that he perpetuated racist stereotypes and opened the gateway to prejudice in mainstream Hollywood film. Refusing to apologize for the messages in his movies, he helped enable a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1910s and 1920s, enabling the onset of violence against black people and minorities in the United States. The "Lost Cause" post-Civil War narrative fabricated by Confederate politicians and high-ranking military was considered to be factual history after audiences saw it on the big silver screen.