The Clansman,the Lynchings,and Enduring Racial Violence in Performance

Abstract

Performance can incite conflict. An artist may depict a demagogue as a martyr, ridicule a group of people, or justify violence. Viewers and audience members variantly interpret these creative expressions. In the early 20th Century, an enormously popular play, The Clansman, toured the United States, opened on Broadway in the spring of 1906, and instigated violence. The play by white supremacist Thomas Dixon (1864-1946) portrayed a dystopian and racist view of American Reconstruction in which the Ku Klux Klan heroically saves the day. In March of 1906, the original company of actors performed The Clansman in Springfield, Missouri. Six weeks later, three black men were lynched in Springfield’s town square, a blight in the city’s history. The lynchings disturbingly resembled violence depicted in Dixon’s play. On a national level, journalists connected the murders to the preceding performance of The Clansman. People can react to Theatre with vehement disagreement, evidenced by The Clansman and more than a century later by the arguments and outcry over Jason Aldean’s 2023 music video “Try That in a Small Town.”