Date of Award

Summer 2025

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

History

First Advisor

Melissa Stuckey

Abstract

In 1905, Thomas Dixon, Jr., published his controversial novel The Clansman. Monopolizing on racist sentiments held by white southerners, Dixon’s narrative contributed significantly to the perception of the Lost Cause myth and defense of white supremacy in America. The novel, and its subsequent adaptations as a play and the film Birth of a Nation, was inspired by actual events that occurred in Dixon’s ancestral home of York County, South Carolina. Located in the northernmost region of South Carolina’s Piedmont, York County played host to a struggle for civil rights during the Reconstruction Era that garnered national and international attention. After the Civil War, as recently freed people of African descent sought to exercise their newfound rights and freedoms, an unprecedented level of racial violence erupted, perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan.

This study uses York County as a microcosm to examine the social, political, and economic impact of Reconstruction on Black and white communities in the rural South. It explores the hopes and fears that emerged in these communities as they navigated the rapidly changing post-bellum society. The analysis is conducted using two of York County’s most influential citizens as proxies – James Williams and James Rufus Bratton. Enslaved on the Bratton plantation, James Williams became an active civil rights leader following emancipation. His life was twisted by Dixon to create an antagonist that embodied the fears harbored by racist southern whites during the Reconstruction Era. James Rufus Bratton was descended from one of York County’s most prominent planter families. After the Civil War he became a leader in the local Ku Klux Klan. His experiences were romanticized by Dixon to establish a protagonist that embodied white hope for the reestablishment of white supremacy in the South.

Rights

© 2025, Zachary Alan Lemhouse

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