SOURCE: Gunning, Sandra. “Re-Membering Blackness after Reconstruction: Race, Rape, and Political Desire in the Work of Thomas Dixon, Jr.” In Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890-1912,” pp. 19-47. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

In the following chapter from her book-length study of fictional reactions to lynching and white mob violence in the post-Reconstruction South, Gunning analyzes the assertion of white male supremacy and reaffirmation of the stereotype of the dangerous black male in several of Dixon's novels.

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide...