Thomas Dixon Jr.’s The Clansman: An American Armageddon

Thomas Dixon Jr’s The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, is infamous for glorifying and romanticizing the Ku Klux Klan as well as providing the source material for D.W. Griffith’s landmark film, The Birth of a Nation. In this English Honors thesis, under the direction of Dr. Stefan Wheelock, I demonstrate that The Clansman fits the genre conventions for both dystopian and utopian literature. Through the framework of utopic literature Dixon attempts to promote his ideal society by illustrating his dystopia: the unification of blacks and whites by miscegenation. The novel depicts a clear ideal for America to aspire to which is white supremacy attained through the reunification of Northerners and Southerners in romantic reconciliation and the suppression of black rights. Dixon’s utopia is accomplished through the reappropriation of the romantic reconciliation trope that he morphs to support his white supremacist utopia where blacks will be subjugated and ultimately expelled from America to protect white civilization from black blood. Thus, it is shown that only through the assimilation of Northern whites to Southern ideals such as white supremacy will the white race be saved from the dystopic society Dixon crafts. However, this utopia is realized partially and is meant to spur other whites to unite to create this utopia in America. This thesis will explore how common tropes such as romantic reconciliation have been reappropriated by Dixon to promote a white supremacist utopia and how the portrayal of white romance became weaponized to demonize miscegenation and promote the subjugation and segregation.

Keywords: miscegenation, white supremacy, utopia, dystopia, Reconstruction, Thomas Dixon

Hello everybody, my name is Christine Kearney, and this English Honors thesis was created with the help of my advisor Stefan Wheelock.
Thomas Dixon Jr. is most well-known for providing the source material of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation which caused the reemergence of the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan.
Despite Dixon being largely disregarded as a figment of the past by the time of his death in 1946, I became fascinated with his work.
Specifically, his second novel, The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, which was notorious for glorifying and romanticizing the Klan as well as inspiring Griffith’s film.
Although in present times Dixon is most often relegated to little more than a line or footnote, during his dynamic career as a minister, lecturer, novelist, playwright, and filmmaker he had a remarkable impact on the development of American culture, an influence that continues even to this day, unconscious and unnamed.
My thesis explores how a common trope called romantic reconciliation has been reappropriated by Dixon in The Clansman to promote a white supremacist utopia and how the portrayal of white romance was weaponized to demonize miscegenation and promote the subjugation and expulsion of the black race.
During my research, I came to realize that The Clansman fulfills the criteria for both dystopian and utopian literature despite not fitting into either tradition.
Let’s set the scene.
1865: South Carolina.
The Confederacy has just been defeated, the president assassinated, and now slavery is no more.
The freedmen have been given citizenship and the right to vote.
The Freedmen’s Bureau is attempting to seize land from white Southerners and give their property to former slaves.
A black militia roams the streets and in the lawmaking house whites have been made the minority, and worst of all: a pro miscegenation bill has been passed – making it legal for black men to marry young white women.
At the beginning of the novel, the South is portrayed as a dystopian society where blacks dominate over whites politically and socially.
This society is one where black men can marry and procreate with young white women against their will, consequently tainting white blood and the future line of American children.
In this reality, America is destroyed not by the cleavages that existed between the two regions of the United States from before the Civil War, but by the black race themselves.
However, the most despicable problem white Southerners face in the novel is miscegenation.
And you can’t talk about Dixon without mentioning his portrayal of black men.
Every one of Dixon’s race novels contained a graphic depiction of the rape of a young white woman by a black man that was meant to shock and horrify his white audience.
These rapes were used as justification for Dixon’s insistence that the black race needed to be disenfranchised and deported from American soil.
Dixon’s first novel, The Leopard’s Spots, highlighted what Dixon saw as the destructive nature of black blood and its ability to destroy not only the white race’s purity, but white civilization and America as a whole.
Black men in Dixon’s books are portrayed as predators determined to marry and procreate with white women causing degradation of the superiority of the white race.
However, what is this utopia and what does Dixon believe will help America get there?
While it seems strange to consider The Clansman utopian literature, keep in mind that a work doesn’t have to feature a utopia that is beneficial for all parts of society. As Brian McGee states, “Bolshevism and Nazism were utopian visions to their leaders and supporters”
If Dixon’s dystopia is the unification of whites and blacks through miscegenation, then the opposite of this reality must be his utopia.
Indeed, the expulsion of blacks and the romantic reconciliation of white Northerners and Southerners is the ideal society Dixon’s characters strive to.
The novel concludes with utopia on the horizon.
This utopia is a new South where the white race subjugates and eventually colonizes or deports all black people to Africa to quell their threat to white civilization via miscegenation.
To make this white supremacist utopia a reality and counteract the existing dystopia of black and white unification that is guaranteed when there are equal rights for black people, Dixon used a different kind of unification.
This unification occurs between only white partners, with Dixon reappropriating the romantic reconciliation trope popular in his time period as a vehicle to spur progress towards a whites only and whites first future in America.
The trope of romantic reconciliation typically featured a Northern man courting a fiery Southern woman whom he would marry, thus reconstructing her to Northern ideals.
This couple were stand ins for the entire nation.
This means that the couple would heal the deep sectional cleavages caused by slavery and the Civil War, promoting Americans to see themselves not as strictly Northerners or Southerners, but as Americans.
Americans who live using Northern ideals.
Dixon reappropriates this trope by depicting the Northern romantic interest abandoning their former allegiances to fully assimilate into the ideology of their Southern partners.
Consequently, Dixon depicts Southern values taking reign of the family’s ideological beliefs, elevating white supremacy to be a crucial feature of the future of American families.
This couple, made from both regions is now united under Southern ideals and will first subjugate the black race to prevent miscegenation and the tainting of white civilization by black blood until whites are able to expel blacks from America using colonization.
Thus, it is shown that only through the assimilation of Northern whites to Southern ideals of white supremacy will the white race be saved from the dystopic society Dixon crafts in his novel.