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67 In the Wake of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation Chesnutt’s Paul Marchand, F.M.C. as Command Performance Susan Prothro Wright This essay sets forth the hypothesis that Charles Chesnutt attempted to publish his novel Paul Marchand, F.M.C. in 1921, with goal of countering D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), the incendiary film version of Thomas Dixon’s equally racist novel, The Clansman (1905), a depiction of the Reconstruction South. Substantiating this hypothesis is relevant to Chesnutt scholarship in general as well as to the further exploration of Paul Marchand, F.M.C.: not only does it help to answer questions about Chesnutt’s decision to submit a novel for publication so long after the publication of his final ill-fated novel, The Colonel’s Dream, in 1905, but it also reveals the novel’s potential as a feasible challenge to Birth’s depictions of both white and black characters. In relation to this point, it is important to note that Chesnutt’s political and literary activities parallel African American activism during the racially turbulent political climate from 1906 until 1921, the year Chesnutt submitted Paul Marchand for publication. Looking at particular efforts and concerns of Chesnutt during this time helps to confirm his intentions for his novel. One must keep in mind that Chesnutt’s strivings for his race were circumscribed by his early resolution to foment a “moral revolution” in the United States through his writing,1 and doing so allows one to surmise that the social and legal inequities suffered by African Americans during this period were likely the prime motivator for his returning to novel writing, the genre he hoped would reverse the tide of continued discrimination against blacks in the United States. Chesnutt’s role in the race struggle at the turn of the nineteenth century is, then, most obviously linked to one of the driving forces uniting African Americans in a common cause—Thomas Dixon’s racist novels. Dixon’s novel The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden (1902), later adapted for stage, was a romanticized version of the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina, “race” riot: it blamed the friction largely on the city’s black population and highlighted the need for white males to protect white females from black Susan Prothro Wright 68 sexual aggression. A few years later, stage productions of the work broadened its popularity by widening its audience, serving, perhaps, as a harbinger of the racial discord of the period. As Patrick Gerster and Nicholas Cords note, Leopard’s Spots “fed [to] northern audiences [Dixon’s] mythical version of Reconstruction history from a New York stage in 1903.” Gerster and Cords add that “not only did Broadway accept [Dixon’s] version of the southern past, but the production was the hit of the theatrical season” (55). Chesnutt’s resistance to Dixon’s racist ideology began in relation to Leopard’s and, I would argue, culminated with Birth. In relation to Leopard’s, Chesnutt became acutely aware of the political importance of The Marrow of Tradition (1901), his own historical novel about the Wilmington riot, could play in presenting the riot from an African American perspective. Having entertained high hopes for Marrow’s being recognized as an impartial rendering of the effects of racism in the aftermath of a harrowing historical event, Chesnutt was forced to take note of the largely negative reception of the novel;2 subsequently, he sought ways to bring his novel to the attention of high-ranking political figures: five potentially sympathetic members of the House of Representatives to whom he sent copies of his novel in 1902. Though the representatives’ views of Marrow varied, in general, the three responses he received agreed that both Dixon’s and Chesnutt’s fictionalized versions of the riot held credibility and served to balance one another. Chesnutt was not satisfied with their responses, and his vehemence against racists, especially Southern racists—of which he considered Dixon a preeminent example—persisted.3 As pointed out by Eric Sundquist, Chesnutt “regularly took more openly radical stands than many other black leaders [concerning the injustice of Southern whites against blacks]” (422). In a stinging comment to Washington about the disenfranchisement of Southern blacks, Chesnutt writes of those with whom he shares his heritage: “I wish them well [Southern whites], and first of all I wish that they may learn to do justice. . . . I admire your Christ-like...

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