Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Philosophische Fakultät II
Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik

The Ku Klux Klan in American Literature and Films:
From Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman to Contemporary KKK Novels and Movies

Magisterarbeit
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Magistra Artium (M.A)
im Fach Amerikanistik

Eingereicht von: Alexandra Mohr

Kurzbeschreibung

Der Analyse des Ku Klux Klans in der gegenwärtigen amerikanischen Literatur sowie im Film wird eine Interpretation von Thomas Dixons Roman The Clansman vorangestellt. Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist eine Reflektion verschiedener Aspekte, zum einen Dixons Verachtung der afroamerikanischen Kultur, seine Furcht vor der politischen Macht der Radikalen und seine unglaubliche Wertschätzung der weißen, puritanischen Südstaaten-Gesellschaft. Seine Ehrfurcht vor dem Klan entwickelt sich geradezu zu einer Heroisierung desselben.

Dixons Roman wird im sozialen Kontext der Rekonstruktion betrachtet. Insbesondere wird die gesellschaftliche Rolle der Frau im Kreise des Klans detailliert analysiert und anschließend mit der in der modernen Klan Literatur und im Film dargestellten verglichen.

Daran anknüpfend wird zum zweiten Teil der Arbeit übergeleitet, in welchem mehrere Motive aus den modernen Romanen und dem Film Mississippi Burning denen aus The Clansman und dessen Verfilmung, The Birth of a Nation, gegenüber gestellt werden.

Aus der Analyse lässt sich die These ableiten, dass in den überwiegenden Werken ein sehr einflussreicher Klan stilisiert wird. Um diesen Einfluss nachvollziehen zu können, liegt der Focus in dem Teil der kulturwissenschaftlichen Analyse auf dem sozialen Umfeld einer Südstaatenkleinstadt, aufgrund der Tatsache, dass sich alle Klan Geschichten (ausgenommen The Chamber) in Kleinstädten abspielen. Das Durchdringen und Betrachten der sozialen Strukturen einer Kleinstadt hilft bei der folgenden Charakterisierung verschiedener Protagonisten.
Das überraschende Ergebnis ist, dass in allen Romanen und Filmen, die interpretiert werden, der Ku Klux Klan nicht nur als eine Organisation äußerster Präsenz und Macht erscheint, sondern dass ansatzweise ein bestehender, den Klan umgebender Mythos vermittelt wird, unabhängig davon ob es sich um einen pro-Klan oder einen politisch neutralen Roman oder Film handelt.

Contents

1. Introduction ... 5

2. History or Fiction: Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman in the Context of Reconstruction ... 8
2.1. The Development from a Slave into a Political Threat: The Image of African Americans in Dixon’s Novel ... 8
2.2. Glorifying the Aryan Race: Dixon’s Idea of White Supremacy ... 13
2.2.1. The Rising of the Ku Klux Klan ... 13
2.2.2. Dixon’s Version of the Klan as the Saviour of the White South ... 15
2.2.3. Dixon’s Idolisation of the Klan and the Study of the ‘Dunning School’ ... 18
2.3. Women in the Shadow of the Ku Klux Klan ... 21
2.3.1. Women’s Struggle during Reconstruction ... 21
2.3.2. Devoted Klan Women and the Evil Female Radical ... 23

3. The Birth of a Modern Klan: Dixon’s and Griffith’s Propaganda as a “Midwife to the Rebirth of the Klan” ... 27

4. Dixon’s The Clansman and Contemporary Klan Literature and Film ... 30
4.1. Oppressed or Independent: Different Images of Female Characters and their Husbands in Witness, Fire in the Rock and Mississippi Burning ... 30
4.2. The Klan’s Function as God’s Right Hand and its Double Standard ... 37
4.3. Ignorance as a Small Town Phenomenon: People’s Conscious and Unconscious Support of the Ku Klux Klan ... 42
4.3.1. The Ku Klux Klan in Small Towns ... 42
4.3.2. Social Structures of a Small Town: Nelson Wikstrom’s Political Analysis ... 45
4.3.3. Small Town Characters in Contemporary Klan Literature and Film ... 52
4.4. The Klan Takes Over Politics ... 61

5. The Ku Klux Klan in Moving Pictures ... 65
5.1. The Birth of a Nation ... 65
5.2. Klan Power in Contemporary Movies: an Analysis of Mississippi Burning and a Short Look at The Chamber ... 74

6. Conclusion ... 84

7. Bibliography ... 87

1. Introduction

“It’s the shadow side of the American character, and it’s not going to go away,” explains Wyn Wade, author of The Fiery Cross, an excellent study of the Klan. “The power is their history. We can never forget their potential to do it again.”¹

The Ku Klux Klan and its racist doctrine have a long history. In his work, David Chalmers calls the Klan as “America’s only enduring political terrorist movement”.² The following paper will mainly focus on the presentation of the Klan in Thomas Dixon’s Southern Reconstruction novel The Clansman and D. W. Griffith’s movie The Birth of a Nation, as well as in contemporary American literature and film. In that context, the Klan’s prejudices against African Americans will be discussed – in connection with Karen Hesse’s children book one also has to take prejudices against Jews into account.

The analysis of Ku Klux Klan literature and films will cover three important Klan-eras beginning in 1887 until the 1960s. Different types of texts and film will be set in context with different cultural aspects of that time.

The study will start with a precise interpretation of Dixon’s The Clansman, which differs greatly from the other Klan novels that will be taken into account, mainly in its political approach. Dixon’s novel will be analysed and some of his motives will be discussed in the historical and political context of Reconstruction. Further on, Dixon’s conviction that he had created a historical report of Reconstruction will be investigated. The following analysis of the female characters in The Clansman is intended to prove Dixon’s support of male hegemony. Elsie, the heroine of the novel, and her relationship with the young Klan leader Ben Cameron will be studied. Especially, Elsie’s social development is important for this investigation.

After discussing the role of different Kluxer’s wives of Reconstruction, one will come to the second part of the paper, which will start with a close look at the female characters of a cross-section of modern American literature and film: Karen Hesse’s children book Witness, Joe Martin’s Southern novel Fire in the Rock, and Alan Parker’s movie Mississippi Burning. The selection of these special novels and this film is based on the fact that they, on the surface, appear as contrasting works to Dixon’s novel. The interesting point is that studying these stories, one will be able to uncover certain similar motives.

Hesse’s Klan story Witness is set in Vermont of the 1920’s. A whole town is confronted with the local Ku Klux Klan and its increasing power. In free verse, Hesse presents the struggle of different inhabitants, like the black Leanora Sutter, the Jewish family Hirsh, the unmarried Sara Chickering and Iris Weaver, and the Klan characters Harvey Pettibone, Johnny Reeves, and Merlin van Tornhout. The reader of Witness gets an insight into small town values like the maintenance of morality that is heavily supported and secured by the Klan. In that context, a double standard of one of its members will be revealed.

Joe Martin’s Southern novel Fire in the Rock tells of unusual friendships in the 1960’s between the preacher’s son Bo Fisher, a cheeky Southern girl named Mae Maude, and the creative Pollo, who is of African American origin. In his story, Martin reflects the meaning of true friendship in the context of a discriminating Southern society. The relationship of the three friends gets terribly disturbed by the intolerance of other town people, who are not even members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Fire in the Rock shows how Klan power has been taken to another level. The reader recognises the Klan’s involvement in the judicative body and the executive authority, which will be one main point of the analysis of Martin’s work.

The aim of the second part will be a clear interpretation of different motives in contemporary novels and films that have been chosen. A comparison of those motives with the ones of The Clansman will lead to following thesis which has to be proved through the analysis:

Not only in Dixon’s novel the reader recognises the presence of a proud and extremely powerful Ku Klux Klan. But the Klan also appears to be very influential in contemporary literature and film. It will be the intent to take a look behind the scenes and to find out why the Klan is such a successful organisation, in fiction as in reality.

All Klan stories which will be discussed are set in American small towns (except The Chamber). This will induced one to focus on different political and social structures of small towns. They will be analysed and projected on this study of Klan literature and film to strengthen the argumentation.

The last part of the paper will be an interpretation of D. W. Griffith’s movie The Birth of a Nation, which is based on Dixon’s novel The Clansman, and Alan Parker’s film Mississippi Burning, a Southern states drama. (In that context, we will also briefly refer to James Foley’s movie The Chamber, a drama about a young lawyer who tries to save his grandfather, a Kluxer, from the gas chamber.)

Paying attention to Griffith’s movie is therefore essential for the whole context, because the film had a huge influence on America’s society. In fact, Griffith has succeeded in turning Dixon’s propaganda into a spectacular masterpiece which still serves the Klan’s interest. Parker’s Mississippi Burning turned out to be a good counterpart for the film analysis.

Parker’s drama relates to the true story of three young Civil Rights workers who went missing in a small town in Mississippi in 1964. The FBI sends two agents to investigate the case. Soon, Agent Ward and Agent Anderson are caught in a whirl of events. They receive threats by the Klan, and have to realise that they do not get any support from the local sheriff and his deputy, nor any from other small town inhabitants. Within the framework of this analysis, a close look at cinematic instruments both directors, Griffith and Parker, have used is necessary. It is remarkable that one finds an aestheticism of Klan brutality that is presented in both movies, although we analyse a pro-Klan movie and a political neutral or even anti-Klan movie.

All together, one cannot directly speak of an influence of Dixon’s work on later Klan literature and films. But the presence of some similar motives in all novels and films which will be taken into account, shows an important aspect that will be the main point of this paper: Regardless of a pro-Klan or a political neutral work of fiction, one can recognise either a conscious or an unconscious hero worship of the Klan, or, at least a representation of the Klan’s immense political and social power. One has to assume that different books and films indeed help to create a Klan myth. Throughout the paper, different motives will be compared to strengthen this thesis.
 

2. History or Fiction: Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman in the Context of Reconstruction

2.1. The Development from a Slave into a Political Threat: The Image of African Americans in Dixon’s Novel

By the beginning of the Reconstruction era, many white Southerners had lost their property. Bad investments and the loss of their slaves often meant a personal ruin of former wealthy Southern families, whereas the black population was trying to find a way to cope with their newly gained freedom.

For African Americans, this freedom did not only mean the end of slavery, but some rights and protection guaranteed by the law. Some Radical blacks were convinced that these rights could only be saved by dispossessing white farmers and giving land to former slaves. But others only fought for the “legal equality”³ of the races.⁴

[...]

1 Janesville, Michael Riley : “White & Wrong. New Klan, Old Hatred”, Time Archive, Jul. 06, 1992, available http://www.time.com

2 Chalmers, David: Backfire. How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003, p. 163

3 Brinkley, Alan: “Reconstruction and the New South”, from The Unfinished Nation. A Concise History of the American People, New York, McGraw-Hill, 2nd Edition, 1997, p. 422

4 Brinkley, p. 419-423