The Traitor (Dixon novel)

The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire is a 1907 novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. It is the third part in a trilogy about the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.[1] The two previous installments were The Leopard's Spots, published in 1902, and The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, published in 1905.[1]

The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire
Title page of the first edition of The Traitor.
AuthorsThomas Dixon, Jr.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherDoubleday, Page
Publication date
1907
Pages331

Plot summary

John Graham, a Confederate veteran and dispossessed planter, serves as the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.[2] As black power has been curtailed, the Grand Wizard orders Graham to have one last march through town and finally discontinue their activities.[2] (This was ordered by the Klan's first Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest.) The Klan members burn their robes and bury them in a grave.[2] Two weeks later Graham's rival, Steve Hoyle, starts a new Ku Klux Klan.[2]

Dramatization

A dramatic version was produced in 1908. It was written in collaboration with Channing Pollock, whose name got first billing over that of Dixon.[3]:67

Critical reception

Judith Jackson Fossett, an African-American Associate Professor of English, American Studies, and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, has called the novel "a meditation on whiteness, a contest between the 'good' Klan and the 'bad' Klan."[2] Indeed, this interpretation was echoed by Dixon himself, who viewed the original Ku Klu Klan as indispensable to fight back against black "barbarism" during Reconstruction as opposed to the second Klan, which was more vengeful and violent.[4] She added that the scene where the original Klan members burn and bury their robes is reminiscent of scenes of burials in Edgar Allan Poe's fiction.[2] Moreover, she suggested it paralleled the natural shedding of skin by snakes.[2]

Andrew Warnes, a Reader in American Studies at Leeds University in England, suggested the depictions of the mob mentality of the Ku Klux Klan in Richard Wright's novels were influenced by The Traitor.[4]

References
  1. Ward, Jason Morgan (2011). Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 30–31.
  2. Judith Jackson Fossett, Race Consciousness: Reinterpretations for the New Century, New York, New York: New York University Press, 1997, pp. 39-43
  3. Slide, Anthony (2004). American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2328-3.
  4. Andrew Warnes, Richard Wright's Native Son: A Routledge Study Guide, Routledge, 2007, p. 129
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