Southern Horizons

 

A review of Southern Horizons: The Autobiography of Thomas Dixon (IWV Publishing, 1994).
The name of Thomas Dixon today is little remembered, North or South, but seventy years ago Dixon was one of the most prominent and controversial public figures in the country. The discovery and publication of his autobiography ought to be considered a significant event in the cultural history of the United States. After all, Dixon was the chief collaborator of David Wark Griffith in the production of the epic motion picture “The Birth of a Nation,” and the author of the novel on which it was based, The Clansman. For that reason, if for no other, Dixon deserves a niche in the nation’s memory. But the autobiography offers much more than that, for Dixon’s principal contribution in it is his eyewitness account of the terror of the Reconstruction period, an account that needs to be set against revisionist tamperings with what used to be called “the tragic era.”

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