THOMAS DIXON

Author, lawyer, state legislator and preacher Thomas Dixon was born a year before the end of the Civil War in 1865. He witnessed Reconstruction and absorbed the prevailing racial views among Southern whites of the time. While Dixon opposed slavery, he was a strong advocate for racial segregation.

Two of his novels,The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and The Clansman (1905), formed the basis for D.W. Griffith’s controversial 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.

Dixon ultimately achieved his greatest success and fame on the national lecture circuit which foreshadowed the television evangelists of the modern South.