Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public. The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery, and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939) became controversial because they gave a favorable depiction. In 1940, The Santa Fe Trail gave a strong condemnation of abolitionist John Brown's attacks on slavery. The American civil rights movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes.