| The Flaming Sword | |
| Authors: | Thomas Dixon, Jr. |
| Illustrator: | Edward Shenton |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Monarch Publishing |
| Release 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]
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]
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]
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]