656. The Ku Klux Klan: Birth of a Nation (Part 3)

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Dixon wrote this 1905 novel with the subtitle 'a historical romance of the Ku Klux Klan' which became the basis for D.W. Griffith's film 'The Birth of a Nation' and helped inspire the second incarnation of the Klan.

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A 1902 novel by Dixon that was an account of Reconstruction in which he argued that 'a leopard can't change its spots' - meaning African-Americans couldn't change their nature as former slaves.

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A real book that Tom Buchanan reads in The Great Gatsby, reflecting the early 1920s anxiety about white Anglo-Saxon stock being overwhelmed by other races.

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Referenced as one of the brilliant books the host relied on for research, with Chalmers noting how the Klan gave people in small towns a chance to live out an exciting inner life.