Thomas Dixon

Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. (January 11, 1864 – April 3, 1946) was a American Baptist minister and author, best known for The Clansman —which was to become the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's influential Birth of a Nation (1915).

Related Topics:
January 11 - 1864 - April 3 - 1946 - American - Baptist - D. W. Griffith - Birth of a Nation - 1915

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Born in Shelby, North Carolina, Dixon was educated at Wake Forest and Johns Hopkins University. In addition to his writings, he worked as a lawyer and film producer. Dixon resented the post-Civil War Reconstruction and glorified the exploits of the Ku Klux Klan.

Related Topics:
Shelby, North Carolina - Wake Forest - Johns Hopkins University - Lawyer - Film producer - Civil War - Reconstruction - Ku Klux Klan

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His "Trilogy of Reconstruction", which consisted of The Leopard's Spots (1902), The Clansman (1905), and The Traitor (1907). In these novels, Dixon used historical romance to present blacks as inferior to whites and glorify the antebellum American South. While he claimed to oppose slavery, he believed in a hierarchy of race based on pseudoscientific quasi-evolutionary theories.

Related Topics:
The Leopard's Spots - 1902 - The Clansman - 1905 - The Traitor - 1907 - Blacks - Whites - Antebellum - Slavery - Race - Pseudoscientific - Evolution

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Dixon was a classmate of future President Woodrow Wilson, who publicly praised The Birth of a Nation and helped to institute the government's harshest segregationist policies since before the Civil War (for details, see Ku Klux Klan, Birth of a Nation, and Woodrow Wilson).

Related Topics:
Woodrow Wilson - Ku Klux Klan - Birth of a Nation

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As well, Dixon wrote about the evils of socialism, particularly expressed in his trilogy: The One Woman (1903), Comrades (1909), The Root of Evil (1911). In 1919 the book Comrades was made into a motion picture titled "Bolshevism on Trial."

Related Topics:
Socialism - Bolshevism on Trial

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