Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. (January 11, 1864 – April 3, 1946) was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman — which was to become the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Born in Shelby, North Carolina, Dixon was the son of Thomas Dixon, Sr., a Baptist minister and farmer, and Amanda Elvira McAfee. As a young man, T...
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Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. (January 11, 1864 – April 3, 1946) was an American Baptist minister, playwright, lecturer, North Carolina state legislator, lawyer, and author, perhaps best known for writing The Clansman — which was to become the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Born in Shelby, North Carolina, Dixon was the son of Thomas Dixon, Sr., a Baptist minister and farmer, and Amanda Elvira McAfee. As a young man, Thomas Sr. had inherited a number of slaves from his first wife's father. Dixon Sr., while not an abolitionist, did not want to own slaves himself. At one point he was offered US$100,000 for his slaves, but he declined the offer, worried that their new owner might mistreat them. In his adolescence Dixon helped out on the family farm, an experience that he hated, but that he later would say helped him to relate to the plight of the working man. Dixon grew up during Reconstruction following the Civil War. The government confiscation of farm land,...
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