Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America.

Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America. Edited by Michele K. Gillespie and Randal L. Hall. Making the Modern South. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c. 2006. Pp. x, 224. $42.95, ISBN 0-8071-3130-X.)

At first glance, the title of this edited volume of nine essays on the life and work of Thomas Dixon Jr. might seem somewhat incongruous. What, we might wonder, does Thomas Dixon, writer of reprehensible racist verbiage cloaked in maudlin and sentimental tributes to "old South" sensibilities, have to do with "the birth of modern America"? In fact, as many of the insightful and penetrating contributions to this collection make clear, a study of Dixon and his work can reveal much about the conflicting and contradictory elements present in American life in the early twentieth century and how the virulent racism of the Jim Crow era was itself wedded to modern forms, ideas, and technologies.

The volume begins with a helpful overview of Dixon's life and notes that academic study of Dixon, while a growing phenomenon, is not without controversy, having led at least one North Carolinian to wonder if such academic inquiry serves to blunt investigations into ongoing racism. The essays that follow then pursue specific questions relative to Dixon's work as preacher, as novelist, and as screenwriter for The Birth of a Nation (1915), the landmark D. W. Griffith film based mainly on Dixon's The Clansman (1905). A persistent theme that runs through many of the essays concerns Dixon's apparently contradictory tendencies: his firm belief in Victorian propriety coupled with notions of masculine physicality; and his embracing of the reform beliefs in the Social Gospel movement as well as the extreme racism of the Jim Crow period. Historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage offers an intelligent assessment of Dixon in his larger social context, highlighting Dixon's contradictory impulses in promoting traditional and hierarchical values while enthusiastically embracing modern modes of expression. Indeed, Dixon's ability to tie those values to modern forms helps explain the ability of white supremacy to leave a more enduring mark on the modern world. Yet, Brundage argues, Dixon "could not cross the threshold of modernism" with its acceptance of the primitive, the sensual, and the irrational and thus found himself less able to communicate with American audiences as the twentieth century progressed (p. 36). David Stricklin addresses the apparent tension in Dixon's thought--specifically between the social activist message he preached as a Baptist minister and the extreme racism and sexism he wrote in his novels. To Stricklin the contradiction is, in fact, a "strange consistency," apparently resolved by the Social Gospel notion that the strenuous application of Christian, Anglo-Saxon beliefs and practices would have uplifting effects around the globe (p. 105).

One of the great strengths of this volume lies in its interdisciplinary nature. First conceived as papers at a 2003 symposium at Wake Forest University--Dixon's alma mater--the essays consider Dixon's work from the perspective of literary criticism, religious history, African American studies, and even, in one case, by analyzing the orchestral score for The Birth of a Nation. Literary scholar Scott Romine provides a particularly shrewd analysis of Dixon's construction of whiteness, especially in his novel The Leopard's Spots (1902). Observing that Dixon treated whiteness not so much as an already established entity but more as an action in which whiteness had to be constantly demonstrated and proven, Romine argues that Dixon's concept of whiteness could exist only in a constant state of tension, assault, and trauma. Such insights into Dixon's literary efforts might suggest, to historians, the instabilities and contingencies that shaped this period's seemingly all-powerful assertions of white supremacy, an argument that historian Glenda Gilmore has pursued, albeit with different types of evidence, in Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy (Chapel Hill, 1996).

Not all of the essays are as successful in investigating the historical and literary complexities of Dixon's work and era. Essays examining African American responses to Dixon are, in particular, somewhat less convincing. John David Smith observes some of the astute criticisms leveled at Dixon by leading African American intellectuals of the period who soundly rejected Dixon's odd contention that he was one of "the Negroes ... best friends" (p. 51). But Smith goes on to devote much of his essay to an examination of Dixon's last novel, The Flaming Sword (1939), a work that placed Dixon so far outside the American mainstream readers might wonder why it merits the kind of detailed investigation that Smith provides. Charlene Regester sets off on an intriguing path to consider how Birth of a Nation was constructed as a horror film, particularly in its reception by black audiences. But in light of the many angry and militant black responses to the film, some examples of which Regester includes in her essay, it is not clear that the horror film genre--designed to evoke feelings of dread and terror--best captures the type of reaction that Regester seeks to elucidate.

Still, the overall achievements of this volume make it an important and valuable addition to the literature on turn-of-the-century white supremacy. And despite skepticism about intense academic inquiry into such virulent, and seemingly antiquated, forms of racism, these essays suggest that a close analysis of Dixon's life and work might, indeed, tell us much about the characteristics of the Jim Crow era and how they continue to inform some aspects of our own "modern America" (p. 19).

NINA SILBER

Boston University