For simplification, she said that there were three basic groups. Knight continued his struggle into Reconstruction, distinguishing him as a compelling, if controversial, figure of defiance long beyond the War. Knight continued his struggle into Reconstruction, distinguishing him as a compelling, if controversial, figure of defiance long beyond the War. Forced to flee, he finds refuge with a group of runaway slaves hiding out in the swamps. Forging an alliance with the slaves and other farmers, Knight leads a rebellion that would forever change history.
. The trial was a study in Mississippian absurdity, paradox, contradiction and racial obsessiveness. All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: This site does not store any files on its server. This story is a selection from the March issue of Smithsonian magazine Driving toward the Jones County line, I passed a sign to Hot Coffee—a town, not a beverage—and drove on through rolling cattle pastures and short, new-growth pine trees. Nevertheless, Ross and McConaughey spent a lot of time in Jones County, persuading many county residents to appear in the film. Newt Knight gives me something in my heritage, as a white Southerner, that I can feel proud about.
This, more than anything, explains its widespread disloyalty to the Confederacy, but there was also a surly, clannish independent spirit, and in Newt Knight, an extraordinarily steadfast and skillful leader. The two sisters sitting across the table were gently amused. The big trees were an ordeal to clear, the sandy soil was ill-suited for growing cotton, and the bottomlands were choked with swamps and thickets. After Lowry left, proclaiming victory, Knight and his men emerged from their hide-outs, and once again, began threatening Confederate officials and agents, burning bridges and destroying railroads to thwart the Rebel Army, and raiding food supplies intended for the troops. Then he started reading, beginning with the five now six books about Newton Knight. After many decades of living in the outside world, they are back in Soso, Mississippi, dealing with prejudice from all directions.
Set during the Civil War, Free State of Jones tells the story of defiant Southern farmer, Newt Knight, and his extraordinary armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Banding together with other small farmers and local slaves, Knight launched an uprising that led Jones County, Mississippi to secede from the Confederacy, creating a Free State of Jones. Storyline: Set during the Civil War, Free State of Jones tells the story of defiant Southern farmer, Newt Knight, and his extraordinary armed rebellion against the Confederacy. He waged guerrilla war against the Confederacy and declared loyalty to the Union. Soon afterward, there was a mass meeting of deserters from four Piney Woods counties.
He was giving me no quarter. William Widmer He described Jones County as the most conservative place in Mississippi, but he noted that race relations were improving and that you could see it clearly in the changing attitudes toward Newt Knight. Free State of Jones 2016 Set during the Civil War, Free State of Jones tells the story of defiant Southern farmer, Newt Knight, and his extraordinary armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Banding together with other small farmers and local slaves, Knight launched an uprising that led Jones County, Mississippi to secede from the Confederacy, creating a Free State of Jones. Knight also fathered nine children with his white wife, Serena, and the two families lived in different houses on the same 160-acre farm.
He lived the self-sufficient life of a yeoman Piney Woods farmer, doted on his swelling ranks of children and grandchildren, and withdrew completely from white society. I have so much respect for both of them. It made me really wish my grandfather was still alive, because we were always saying someone should make a movie about Newt. An interracial community began to form near the small town of Soso, and continued to marry within itself. He gave that single long interview in 1921, revealing a laconic sense of humor and a strong sense of right and wrong, and he died the following year, in February 1922. Even in death, he defied them. In bridging the gap between the legendary and the real Free State of Jones, she shows how the legend reveals a great deal about the South's transition from slavery to segregation.
Some of the young guys are really identifying with Newt now, as a symbol of Jones County pride. But the leading scholar of the Knight-led rebellion, Victoria Bynum, author of , points out that Knight had enlisted, under no threat of conscription, a few months after the war began, in July 1861. I drove past many small chicken farms, a large modern factory making transformers and computers, and innumerable Baptist churches. A tall white man with a deep Southern drawl, Gavin has a stern presence, gracious manners and intense brooding eyes. Gavin leads me through the woods to one of the old swamp hide-outs.
Modern Ellisville is dominated by the sprawling campus of Jones County Junior College, where a semiretired history professor named Wyatt Moulds was waiting for me in the entrance hall. A large, friendly, charismatic man with unruly side-parted hair, he was wearing alligator-skin cowboy boots and a fishing shirt. With two rat terriers trotting at his heels, and a long wooden staff in his hand, J. They had seen this many times before. A few years later, there was a vote on it, and the names were changed back. In 1863, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight serves as a medic for the Confederate Army. The old county seat, and ground zero for the Free State of Jones, is Ellisville, now a pleasant, leafy town of 4,500 people.
I really kind of marveled at him. And he kept trying to marry out the color, so we would all keep getting lighter-skinned. Much as Ross wanted to shoot the movie in Jones County, there were irresistible tax incentives to film across the border in Louisiana, and some breathtaking cypress swamps where various cast members were infested with the tiny mites known as chiggers. He did so deliberately, and to the hell with the consequences. It depicts Jones County as Davis County, and Ellisville as Leesburg.
So I went and did Hunger Games, but always keeping an eye on this. The old folks call this one Sal Batree. With hanging ropes and packs of vicious, manhunting dogs, they subdued the surrounding counties and then moved into the Free State of Jones. Ross was instantly intrigued, both by the character and the revelation of Unionism in Mississippi, the most deeply Southern state of all. He was carrying two huge, leather-bound volumes of his family genealogy.