Thomas Frederick Dixon Jr. (January 11, 1864 – April 3, 1946) was an American white supremacist and polymath: a Baptist minister, politician, lawyer, lecturer, writer, and filmmaker. Dixon wrote two best-selling novels, The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865–1900 (1902) and The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), that romanticized Southern white supremacy, endorsed the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, opposed equal rights for black people, and glorified the Ku Klux Klan as heroic vigilantes. Film director D. W. Griffith adapted The Clansman for the screen in The Birth of a Nation (1915). The film inspired the creators of the 20th-century rebirth of the Klan.
Dixon was born in Shelby, North Carolina, the son of Thomas Jeremiah Frederick Dixon Sr. and Amanda Elvira McAfee, daughter of a planter and slave-owner from York County, South Carolina. He was one of eight children, of whom five survived to adulthood. His elder brother, preacher Amzi Clarence Dixon, helped to edit The Fundamentals, a series of articles (and later volumes) influential in fundamentalist Christianity. "He won international acclaim as one of the greatest ministers of his day." His younger brother Frank Dixon was also a preacher and lecturer. His sister, Elizabeth Delia Dixon-Carroll, became a pioneer woman physician in North Carolina and was the doctor for many years at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C.
Dixon's father, Thomas J. F. Dixon Sr., son of an English–Scottish father and a German mother, was a well-known Baptist minister and a landowner and slave-owner. His maternal grandfather, Frederick Hambright (possible namesake for the fictional North Carolina town of Hambright in which The Leopard's Spots takes place), was a German Palatine immigrant who fought in both the local militia and in the North Carolina Line of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Dixon Sr. had inherited slaves and property through his first wife's father, which were valued at $100,000 in 1862.
In his adolescence, Dixon helped out on the family farms, an experience that he hated, but he would later say that it helped him relate to the working man's plight. Dixon grew up after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction period. The government confiscation of farmland, coupled with what Dixon saw as the corruption of local politicians, the vengefulness of Union troops, along with the general lawlessness of the period, all served to embitter him, and he became staunchly opposed to the reforms of Reconstruction.
Family involvement in the Ku Klux Klan
Dixon's father, Thomas Dixon Sr., and his maternal uncle, Col. Leroy McAfee, both joined the Klan early in the Reconstruction era with the aim of "bringing order" to the tumultuous times. McAfee was head of the Ku Klux Klan in Piedmont, North Carolina. "The romantic colonel made a lasting impression on the boy's imagination", and The Clansman was dedicated "To the memory of a Scotch-Irish leader of the South, my uncle, Colonel Leroy McAfee, Grand Titan of the Invisible Empire Ku Klux Klan". Dixon claimed that one of his earliest recollections was of a parade of the Ku Klux Klan through the village streets on a moonlit night in 1869, when Dixon was 5. Another childhood memory was of the widow of a Confederate soldier. She had served under McAfee accusing a black man of the rape of her daughter and seeking Dixon's family's help. Dixon's mother praised the Klan after it had hanged and shot the alleged rapist in the town square.
In 1877, Dixon entered the Shelby Academy, where he earned a diploma in two years. In September 1879, at the age of 15, Dixon followed his older brother and enrolled at the Baptist Wake Forest College, where he studied history and political science. As a student, Dixon performed remarkably well. In 1883, after four years, he earned a master's degree. His record at Wake Forest was outstanding, and he earned the distinction of achieving the highest student honors ever awarded at the university until then. As a student there, he was a founding member of the chapter of Kappa Alpha Order fraternity, and delivered the 1883 Salutatory Address with "wit, humor, pathos and eloquence".
"After his graduation from Wake Forest, Dixon received a scholarship to enroll in the political science program at Johns Hopkins University, "then the leading graduate school in the nation". There he met and befriended fellow student and future President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was also a Southerner, and Dixon says in his memoirs that "we became intimate friends.... I spent many hours with him in [Wilson's room]." It is documented that Wilson and Dixon took at least one class together: "As a special student in history and politics he undoubtedly felt the influence of Herbert Baxter Adams and his circle of Anglo-Saxon historians, who sought to trace American political institutions back to the primitive democracy of the ancient Germanic tribes. The Anglo-Saxonists were staunch racists in their outlook, believing that only latter-day Aryan or Teutonic nations were capable of self-government." But after only one semester, despite the objections of Wilson, Dixon left Johns Hopkins to pursue journalism and a career on the stage.
Dixon headed to New York City, and while he says in his autobiography that he enrolled briefly at an otherwise unknown Frobisher School of Drama, what he acknowledged publicly was his enrollment in a correspondence course given by the one-man American School of Playwriting, of William Thompson Price. Apparently as an advertisement for the school, he reproduced in the program his handwritten thank-you note.
As an actor, Dixon's physical appearance was a problem. He was 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) but only 150 pounds (68 kg), making for a very lanky appearance. One producer remarked that he would not succeed as an actor because of his appearance, but Dixon was complimented for his intelligence and attention to detail. The producer recommended that Dixon put his love for the stage into scriptwriting. Despite the compliment, Dixon returned home to North Carolina in shame.
Upon his return to Shelby, Dixon quickly realized that he was in the wrong place to begin to cultivate his playwriting skills. After the initial disappointment from his rejection, Dixon, with the encouragement of his father, enrolled in the short-lived Greensboro Law School, in Greensboro, North Carolina. An excellent student, Dixon received his law degree in 1885.
It was during law school that Dixon's father convinced Thomas Jr. to enter politics. After graduation, Dixon ran for the local seat in the North Carolina General Assembly as a Democrat. Despite being only 20 years of age and too young to vote, he won the 1884 election by a 2-1 margin, a victory that was attributed to his eloquence. Dixon retired from politics in 1886 after only one term in the legislature. He said that he was disgusted by the corruption and the backdoor deals of the lawmakers, and he is quoted as referring to politicians as "the prostitutes of the masses." However short, Dixon's political career gained him popularity throughout the South as he was the first to champion Confederate veterans' rights.
Following his career in politics, Dixon practiced private law for a short time, but he found little satisfaction as a lawyer and soon left the profession to become a minister.
Dixon saw himself, and wanted to be remembered as, a man of ideas. He described himself as a reactionary.
Dixon claimed to be a friend of black people, but he believed that they would never be the equal of whites, who he believed had superior intelligence; according to him, blacks could not benefit much even from the best education. He thought giving them the vote was a mistake, if not a disaster, and the Reconstruction Amendments were "insane".
He favored returning black people to Africa, although, since there were nearly 7.5 million black Americans by 1890, this was not a realistic position.
Historian Albert Bushnell Hart indicates the implacability of Dixon's opposition to the advancement of blacks, quoting Dixon: "Make a negro a scientific and successful farmer, and let him plant his feet deep in your soil, and it will mean a race war."