The Flaming Sword (novel)
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| Authors | Thomas Dixon, Jr. |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Edward Shenton |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Monarch Publishing |
Publication date | 1939 |
The Flaming Sword was a 1939 novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr. It was his twenty-eighth and last novel.[1] It has been described as "a racist jeremiad centered on the specter of black sexuality."[2]
Background
[edit]The novel is the last installment of a trilogy which included The Clansman and The Birth of a Nation.[3] It is partly based on The Red Dawn, a play written by Dixon in 1919.[3]
Dixon worked sixteen hours a day on this novel.[4] The book came with thirty pages of illustrations done by Edward Shenton.[3] It was published by Monarch Publishing, owned by Edward Young Clarke, a Ku Klux Klan member.[3]
The title is taken from a quotation by African-American leader W.E.B. Du Bois: "Across this path stands the South with flaming sword."[2][4][5]
Plot summary
[edit]Shortly after Angela Cameron gets married, an African-American man breaks into her house, kills her husband and son, and rapes her sister.[3] As a result, she decides to move to New York City and learn more about the situation of African-Americans.[3] Meanwhile, African-Americans and Communists try to overthrow the government, and they succeed: the country becomes known as the 'Soviet Republic of the United States' and the only newspaper available in New York City is the Soviet Herald.[6][7] However, she meets her childhood sweetheart and decides everything is not lost.[3] Eventually, she donates US$10 million to found the Marcus Garvey Colonization Society, whose aim is to repatriate African Americans to the African continent.[2][5]
Critical reception
[edit]The book was reprinted four times in the first two months of publication.[3] In 2005, it was reprinted by the University Press of Kentucky.[1]
According to biographer Anthony Slide, the novel "is generally seen as a critical failure."[3] Indeed, The New York Times called it "a nightmare melodrama" and "the expression of a panic fear."[3] Alluding to World War II, the New York Herald Tribune suggested, "it is not as wildly incredible today as it might have seemed a few short weeks ago."[3]
The novel was praised by Marcus Garvey.[5]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Project Muse
- ^ a b c Alusine Jalloh, Toyin Falola, The United States and West Africa: Interactions and Relations, Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2008 p. 86 [1]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Anthony Slide, American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon, Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2004, pp. 186-189 [2]
- ^ a b Jason Morgan Ward, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2011, pp. 31-32 [3]
- ^ a b c Ibrahim Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2004, p. 313 [4]
- ^ Glen David Gold, Excerpt: 'Thomas Dixon: Jael-baiter', NPR, June 4, 2007
- ^ Thomas Dixon, 1864-1946 , Documenting the American South