Thomas Dixon, Jr.

If you are like most people, you have no idea just who Thomas Dixon, Jr., is, and that is a sad thing. I can tell you that your grandparents or great-grandparents most likely heard the name. Thomas Dixon was quite famous in his time, which was early in the 20th century. He was an amazing man--no one I know of has ever been so successful at so many different careers. His Reconstruction trilogy served as the basis for the movie Birth of a Nation--I dare say some of you may have heard of this. The movie, directed by D.W. Griffiths, was one of the first major motion pictures, and it is still studied and watched today on the basis of its merits as a film. The story, though, was Dixon's account of Reconstruction--based on his own memories and on the facts as he researched them. The movie has been defiled as racist propaganda; it was boycotted quite vociferously at the time of its release, and in fact the movie may never have seen the light of day had it not been for Woodrow Wilson. Thomas Dixon had known Wilson briefly as a student, and this helped win him an audience for the movie within the White House itself. After seeing the epic masterpiece, Wilson uttered the famous words that have defined the motion picture--it is like "writing history with lightning."

While Thomas Dixon has been almost completely forgotten, he has been vilified, by those that have not forgotten him, as a racist; he has in fact been blamed for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century. Dixon himself disavowed the character and tactics of the Ku Klux Klan that appeared in America in the 1920s; while it is true that Dixon extolled the virtues of the Ku Klux Klan in his novels, he was referring to the original Ku Klux Klan that appeared in the South to fight the evils and excesses of Radical Reconstruction. The Klan he wrote about were the mythical saviors of the white race who defended Southern Womanhood and the Southern way of life in the late 1860s. The impressions that fueled his writing were those of his own youth growing up in Cleveland County, North Carolina. I have attempted to show (and my paper is available in the history section of this web site) that the Klan activity that took place in Thomas Dixon's home county in 1870 and 1871 was motivated primarily by white Republican excesses and moonshining--while I cannot deny there was a racial element to events there, race was clearly not a primary factor in events. Thomas Dixon loved the black man, and yet he argued for his removal and separation from the white man--he felt this was best for both races because, should they live together miscegenation was inevitable, and his fear of racial mixing became an obsession to him. This is what makes Dixon so important to history--no one else better exemplifies the Radical mentality of the early 20th century white man. His novels, and Birth of a Nation influenced American thought and helped shape race relations in this country up to the present day. He must not be forgotten, and I will not let him be forgotten. Thomas Dixon--the real one and not the beast he is sometimes made out to be--will always have a sanctuary here. I do not ask you to like Dixon or agree with him, only to study him. His ideas are necessarily out-of-date and, to some degree, racist, but to read him is to come to a better understanding of race relations in this country. The Negro question was truly this "white man's burden" because he loved the black man but could not find a place for him in America. Does this not sound like a timely question even today?

Sources of Information on Thomas Dixon, Jr.

Sadly, there are not very many sources of information anywhere on Thomas Dixon, Jr., which is one reason I have devoted this web site to him.

1. Joel Williamson, in The Crucible of Race devotes a good chapter on Dixon's influence on race relations. His argument is a little too psychological for my liking, but, all in all, he offers a fair, balanced assessment of the man. He was really the first historian to resurrect an all-but-forgotten Thomas Dixon, and that in itself makes his book worthwhile. As an aside, let me say that I studied under Joel Williamson in college; I was actually associated with him for six years, and he is a great historian; more than that, he is a great writer--as evidenced by his interest in William Faulkner. I heartily endorse any of Williamson's books.
2. Raymond Allen Cook has written the only true biography of Dixon. His Fire From the Flint: The Amazing Careers of Thomas Dixon was published in 1968. His is a very good book; while his study of Thomas' life is not terribly complex, the story he tells of the whole Dixon family makes it worthwhile reading--Thomas' two brothers and two sisters had their own highly successful lives (Amzi Clarence Dixon, for example, the oldest son in the family, became a preacher whose name was known on three continents).
3. The classic movie Birth of a Nation.
4. Sandra Gunning devotes a chapter to Thomas Dixon, Jr., in her recent book Race, Rape, and Lynching; I have not been fortunate enough to attain this book as of yet.
5. Thomas Dixon's autobiography was not completed when he died in 1946. It was not until the death of his second wife that these papers saw the light of day. Karen Crowe edited this material and published it as Southern Horizons; Dixon's self-examination reveals the wit and intelligence of this man, and the stories he tells of his childhood only go to prove tha the events he wrote of in his Reconstruction novels were based in fact (or at least, his personal memory of the facts as he experienced them). Where else can you read about an outhouse being referred to as a "house of congress" by Southerners during the dark days of Radical Reconstruction?
6. An electronic version of one of Dixon's historical novels of Abraham Lincoln, The Man in Gray can be found on the Civil War Classics CD in the Ultimate Civil War Collection set from CounterTop Software.
7. Read an electronic version of The Leopard's Spots
8. Read an electronic version of The Clansman
9. Read Kim Magowan's article "Thomas Dixon's Fatal Paternity"
10. The Technology and Influence of Early Motion Pictures in America has some information about D.W. Griffiths and Birth of a Nation, including a couple of stills from the film. The authors have a negative view as to the subject matter of the film, which I cannot endorse.
11. Kelly Miller of Howard University wrote an open letter to Dixon in 1905, which was distributed as a pamphlet entitled As to The Leopard's Spots: An Open Letter to Thomas Dixon, Jr. Miller was not a fan of Dixon's work, to say the least.
12. You can find a number of stills from Birth of a Nation at this Birth of a Nation site

1. Robinson, Cedric J., In the Year 1915: D.W. Griffith and the Whitening of America (Social Identities, Jun97, Vol. 3 Issue 2, p161, 32p)
   Abstract:   Analyzes filmmaker D.W. Griffith's depiction of American racism in the motion picture `The Birth of a Nation.' Changes in the population and film production coinciding with the film's release; Appropriation of narratives from ideologists to designate Afro-American desire; Griffith's use of the epic genre to portray his imagined moral order; Griffith's efforts to pose national redemption in racial terms.

2. Martin, Jeffrey B., Film out of Theatre: D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation and the Melodrama The Clansman (Literature Film Quarterly, 1990, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p87, 9p)
   Abstract:   Compares D.W. Griffith's film adaptation `The Birth of a Nation' and Thomas Dixon's novel `The Clansman' from which the film was adapted. Focus on the degree to which Griffith used or discarded material drawn from the book; Similarity in both subject matter and dramatic structure; Centrality of Dixon's play to Griffith's adaptation.

3. McGee, Brian R., Thomas Dixon's The Clansman: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Anticipated Utopia (Southern Communication Journal Summer 2000, Volume 65 Issue 4)
   Abstract:   Examines the historical and cultural conditions that led to the writing of "The Clansman," by Thomas Dixon. Similarities between the book and other rhetorical artifacts produced by Dixon; Summary of the book's utopian and dystopian themes; Description of the use of utopian and dystopian themes as resources for rhetorical practice.

4. Magowan, Kim, Coming Between the "Black Beast" and the White Virgin: The Pressures of Liminality in Thomas Dixon (Studies in American Fiction Spring 1999, Volume 27 Issue 1)
   Abstract:   Provides information on a study which analyzed the novels of Thomas Dixon and his view of racism and black people. Racist ideology as predicated upon a notion of fixed, stable identity; Dixon's version of miscegenation in his novels "The Leopard's Spots" and "The Clansman"; How images of black animalism proliferate in his text; Description of his characters.

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