Thomas Dixon, Jr. and American Identity Tiffany West Florida International University, [email protected]
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Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 7-8-2016 A Generation of Race and Nationalism: Thomas Dixon, Jr. and American Identity Tiffany West Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FIDC000743 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Recommended Citation West, Tiffany, "A Generation of Race and Nationalism: Thomas Dixon, Jr. and American Identity" (2016). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2579. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2579 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida A GENERATION OF RACE AND NATIONALISM: THOMAS DIXON, JR. AND AMERICAN IDENTITY A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by Tiffany West 2016 To: Dean John F. Stack, Jr. Green School of International and Public Affairs This dissertation, written by Tiffany West, and entitled A Generation of Race and Nationalism: Thomas Dixon, Jr. and American Identity, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved. April Merleaux Kirsten Wood Erik Larson Professor Darden A. Pyron, Major Professor Date of Defense: July 8, 2016 The dissertation of Tiffany West is approved. Dean John F. Stack, Jr. Green School of International and Public Affairs Andrés G. Gil Vice President for Research and Economic Development and Dean of the University Graduate School Florida International University, 2016 ii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION A GENERATION OF RACE AND NATIONALISM: THOMAS DIXON, JR. AND AMERICAN IDENTITY by Tiffany West Florida International University, 2016 Miami, Florida Professor Darden A. Pyron, Major Professor Thomas Dixon (1864-1946) has won a singular place in history as a racial ideologue and an exemplar of Southern racism. The historical evidence, however, suggests Southern culture was only one of a variety of intellectual influences, and, though highly visible in most famous works, not Dixon’s primary concern. Rather, his discussions of the South are framed within larger intellectual debates over the region as a whole, and how it related to the rest of the nation. Throughout his life, Dixon helped shape and articulate those values in the formation of a new American identity at the turn- of-the-century. By incorporating the methods of intellectual biography, whiteness studies, literary analysis, and cultural studies into the scholarly approaches of history, this work enlarges the historical understanding of Dixon through the examination of his very long life and varied career and the exploration of his equally diverse and numerous writings, both personal and public. This project’s end goal is to enrich historical understanding of how national identity is interpreted, constructed, and shaped over time, and the many different components influencing its formation. iii This research found that defining what is and is not American built on and responded to the major issues of a specific historical context. Dixon’s, and the nation’s larger attempts at defining the terms of Americanism became increasingly complicated during key national turning points, such as the Spanish-American War, the economic depressions of the 1890s, and political realignments at the turn-of-the-century. Analyzing Dixon’s works revealed the influence of the various forces that reshaped American identity, including race theories, scientific advancements, immigration, sectional reconciliation, imperialism, and religion. This work concludes that national identity construction is fluid, and that researchers must consider the importance of historical context in analyses of ideology and cultural trends. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction……………………………………………..……………………….…..…….1 Chapter One A Political Education in Theory and Practice (1879-1886)…………………...…12 Chapter Two No Difference Between Secular and Divine (1886-1895)……………..………...58 Chapter Three The Emergence of White Nationalism in Dixon’s Public Works (1896-1901)...100 Chapter Four The Reconstruction Trilogy (1902-1907)………………………………………139 Chapter Five The Anti-Socialism Trilogy (1903-1911)………………………………………198 Chapter Six Responses to Dixon’s Work (1905-1946)……………………………….……...239 Epilogue…………………………………………………………..…………………….273 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………....276 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………..323 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………326 v Introduction “Morals are relative things. They are based on the experiences and faiths of the generations which express them.”— Comrades (1909) Thomas Dixon, Jr. has become ubiquitous in the numerous academic discussions of white supremacism at the turn of the century. He has won a singular place in history by his creation of a trilogy of novels set during Reconstruction, The Leopard’s Spots, The Clansman, and The Traitor, which he published between 1902 and 1907. The film adaptation of these fictions, D.W. Griffith’s silent epic, Birth of a Nation (1915) brought Dixon even greater fame and notoriety.1 For the century since, Dixon’s public standing, based on the trilogy and film, has revolved around his reputation as a racial ideologue and 1 The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 silent epic film directed by D.W. Griffith, has received extensive historical attention in the fields of American culture, race relations, and film studies. It is notable not only for its content, but its style and filming techniques. A multitude of scholars study the film. See: John Hope Franklin, “’Birth of a Nation’: Propaganda as History,” The Massachusetts Review 20, no. 3 (Autumn 1979): 417-434; Brian Gallagher, “Racist Ideology and Black Abnormality in The Birth of a Nation,” Phylon 43, no. 1 (1st Quarter 1982): 68-76; Everett Carter, “Cultural History Written With Lightning: The Significance of The Birth of a Nation (1915),” in Hollywood as Historian: American Film in a Cultural Context (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983) edited by Peter C. Rollins; Michael Paul Rogin, “’The Sword Became a Flashing Vision’: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation,” in Ronald Reagan The Movie: And Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987): 190- 235; Jeffrey B. Martin, “Film Out of Theatre: D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation and the Melodrama The Clansman,” Literature/Film Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1990): 87-95; Robert Lang, ed., The Birth of a Nation (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994); Amy Kaplan, “The Birth of an Empire,” PMLA 114, no. 5 (October 1999): 1068-1079; Riché Richardson, “’The Birth of a Nation’hood’: Lessons from Thomas Dixon and D.W. Griffith to William Bradford Huie and The Klansman, O.J. Simpson’s First Movie,” The Mississippi Quarterly 56, no. 1 (Winter 2002/2003): 3-31; Michele Faith Wallace, “The Good Lynching and ‘The Birth of a Nation’: Discourses and Aesthetics of Jim Crow,” Cinema Journal 43, no. 1 (Autumn 2003): 85-104; Melvyn Stokes, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: A History of “the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Riché Richardson, “Lesson from Thomas Dixon to The Klansman,” in Black Masculinity and the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 24-72; and Eric Olund, “Geography Written in Lightning: Race, Sexuality, and Regulatory Aesthetics in The Birth of a Nation,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103, no. 4 (2013): 925-943. 1 an exemplar of Southern racism. Most of the Dixon historiography focuses on the novels’ and film’s racial imagery and promotion of white supremacy; these elements are often credited with helping to fuse white supremacist attitudes into large swaths of the American public, and sparking the early-twentieth century rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.2 While some recent works have attempted to further explore the historical context surrounding Dixon’s work, no singular historical work has explored his ideological 2 The most comprehensive biographies covering Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s entire life were written by Raymond Allen Cook, Fire From the Flint: The Amazing Careers of Thomas Dixon (Winston-Salem, North Carolina: John F. Blair, 1968) and Thomas Dixon (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1974). For more on the life and works of Dixon, see: Max F. Harris, “Ideas of Thomas Dixon on Race Relations,” (MA Thesis, University of North Carolina, 1948); Frances Oakes, “Whitman and Dixon: A Strange Case of Borrowing,” The Georgia Review 11, no. 3 (Fall 1957): 333-340; Thomas L. Gross, “The Negro in the Literature of Reconstruction,” Phylon 22, no. 1 (1961): 5-14; Maxwell Bloomfield, “The Leopard’s Spots: A Study in Popular Racism,” American Quarterly 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1964): 387-401; James Zebulon Wright, “Thomas Dixon: Mind of a Southern Apologist,” (MA Thesis, The George Peabody School for Teachers, 1966); F. Garvin Davenport, Jr., “Thomas Dixon’s Mythology of Southern History,” Journal of Southern History 36, no. 3 (August 1970): 350-367; Russell Merritt, “Dixon, Griffith, and Southern Legend,” Cinema Journal 12, no. 1 (Autumn 1972): 26-45.; David K. Clerico, “Thomas Dixon, Jr. and the Trilogy of