Thomas Dixon - Definition and Overview

Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. (January 11, 1864 – April 3, 1946) was an American author and Baptist minister. Dixon was a classmate of future President Woodrow Wilson.

From the South, he bitterly resented the effects of Reconstruction and glorified the exploits of the Ku Klux Klan.

He is best known for 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 evolutionary theories.

The Clansman was the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's epic movie Birth of a Nation (1915).

External link

• Dixon and his novels (http://docsouth.unc.edu/dixonclan/menu.html)