Thomas Frederick Dixon Jr. (January 11, 1864 – April 3, 1946) was an American 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.

[1] His elder brother, preacher Amzi Clarence Dixon, helped to edit The Fundamentals, a series of articles (and later volumes) influential in fundamentalist Christianity.

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.

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.

[2]: 34  As a student there, he was a founding member of the chapter of Kappa Alpha Order fraternity,[10] and delivered the 1883 Salutatory Address with "wit, humor, pathos and eloquence".

[citation needed] Upon his return to Shelby, Dixon quickly realized that he was in the wrong place to begin to cultivate his playwriting skills.

[23][24] 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.

"[30] In his autobiography, Dixon claims to have personally witnessed the following: In addition, because his uncle was very involved in both the Klan and other local politics, residents funded him to go to Washington on their behalf.

Dixon had a particular hatred for Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, leader in the House of Representatives, because he supported land confiscation from whites and its distribution to blacks (see 40 acres and a mule).

His popularity rose quickly, and before long, he was offered a position at the large Dudley Street Baptist Church (razed in 1964[40]) in Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts.

[2]: 42  There he would preach at new heights, rubbing elbows with the likes of John D. Rockefeller and Theodore Roosevelt (whom he helped in a campaign for New York governor).

[43] In 1895, Dixon resigned his position, saying that "for reaching of the non-church-going masses, I am convinced that the machinery of a strict Baptist church is a hindrance", and that he wished for "a perfectly free pulpit".

Thomas Dixon, Jr."[44] A published letter from "An Old-Fashioned Clergyman" accused him of "sensationalism in the pulpit"; he responded that he was sensationalistic, but this was preferable to "the stupidity, failure, and criminal folly of tradition," an example of which was "putting on women's clothes [clerical robes] in the hope of adding to my dignity on Sunday by the judicious use of dry goods.

[citation needed] When absent giving lectures, "the only man I could find who could hold my big crowd" was socialist Eugene V. Debs, whom Dixon speaks very highly of.

[46] "While pastor of the People's church [sic] in New York he was once indicted on a charge of criminal libel for his pulpit attacks on city officials.

"[49] He insisted repeatedly that he was only telling the truth, furnished documentation when challenged,[50] and asked his critics to point out any untruths in his works, even announcing a reward for anyone who could.

"[61] It was during such a lecture tour that Dixon attended a theatrical version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

[70] Dixon's Clansman caricatures the Reconstruction as an era of "black rapists" and "blonde-haired" victims, and if his racist opinions were unknown, the vile and gratuitous brutality and Klan terror in which the novel revels might be read as satire.

[70] If "Dixon used the motion picture as a propaganda tool for his often outrageous opinions on race, communism, socialism, and feminism,"[18] D. W. Griffith, in his movie adaptation of the novel, The Birth of a Nation (1915), is a case in point.

In The Leopard's Spots, the Reverend Durham character indoctrinates Charles Gaston, the protagonist, with a foul-mouthed diatribe of hate speech.

[71] His writing centered on three major themes: racial purity, the evils of socialism, and the traditional family role of woman as wife and mother.

It opened in Norfolk on September 22, 1905, and toured the south with great commercial success before venturing into receptive northern markets such as Indianapolis.

No background or justification is offered for Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Klan or the institution of lynching, but the play nonetheless excited the passions of southern audiences that took these for granted.

Journalists called the play a "riot breeder" and an "exhibition of hysterics" while an Atlanta Baptist minister denounced it as a slander on white southerners as well as black.

[77] The Clansman played in New York in 1906, again to an enthusiastic audience and critical panning, while Dixon gave speeches around the city and unsuccessfully offered Booker T. Washington a bribe to repudiate racial equality.

He distanced himself from the "bigotry" of the revived "second era" Ku Klux Klan, which he saw as "a growing menace to the cause of law and order", and its members "unprincipled marauders" (and they in turn attacked Dixon).

"[85] While lauding the "loyalty and good citizenship" of Catholics, he claimed it was the "duty of whites to lift up and help" the supposedly "weaker races."

"After he had spent a vast amount of money on its development, the enterprise collapsed as speculative bubbles in land across the country began to burst before the crash of 1929.

Less than a month later, from his hospital bed, Dixon married Madelyn Donovan, an actress thirty years his junior, who had played a role in a film adaptation of Mark of the Beast.