The Free State of Jones
Subtitle: Mississippi's Longest Civil War
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: December 2, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780807854679
Subjects: American history: c 1800 to c 1900; Civil war; Slavery & emancipation; c 1800 to c 1900; History: American; History; History - U.S.; Mississippi; Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General; United States - Civil War; United States - State & Local - General; Civil War; Confederate deserters; Piney Woods; Mississippi; Knight Company; Newton Knight; Leaf River; Jones County; Republic of Jones; Davis Knight; American Revolution; Civil Rights Movement; Old South; New South; Free State of Jones; Social Science / African-American Studies
First sentence: Although South Carolina was the birthplace of most Jones County settlers, most of the parents of these settlers, especially those born before 1820, came from North Carolina.
Description: Newt Knight was a man who defied social rules by deserting from the Confederacy, hiding in the swamp with runaway slaves and other deserters to fight the Rebels and declare Jones County, Mississippi as the Free State of Jones. Some of his men were captured and executed and, as in the movie, the women in their family cut them down. Women also aided the Knight Company. Newt also took a black wife who had several mixed race children. Free State of Jones is an excellent comprehensive study that begins with people in the back country of North Carolina during the Revolutionary War who settled Jones County bringing with them their sense of justice and attitudes toward tyranny. Bynum mines every available source to recreate the society of Jones County through the decades from settlement into the 20th century. Bynum describes the mixed race community created by the tangled and complicated extended families who intermarried and created their own schools living in defiance of the hardening Jim Crow attitudes. Bynum expertly places Davis Knight’s 1948 charge of miscegenation in the larger historical context of the period and expertly connects it to Newt Knight’s flaunting sexual racial norms of his day. Newton Knight has been portrayed as a principled American patriot fighting for civil rights for African Americans and his mixed race progeny and as an unprincipled, villainous traitor who betrayed his race, the Confederacy and transgressed racial boundaries. Whichever narrative a person believes reveals a great deal about that person’s attitude about race and the Confederacy.