{"id":32141,"date":"2013-07-07T01:33:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T01:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32141"},"modified":"2013-07-07T02:05:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T02:05:39","slug":"mississippi-rebels-descendants-seek-family-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32141","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi rebel’s descendants seek family facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mississippi rebel’s descendants seek family facts<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Jackson Sun<\/a>
\n2013-07-04<\/p>\n

Laura Tillman<\/strong>, Associated Press<\/p>\n

SOSO, MISS.<\/a> \u2014 One hundred and fifty years have passed since the Civil War<\/a>, but in Mississippi<\/a>, the descendants of a legendary rebel are still separating the facts of his life from fiction.<\/p>\n

Newton Knight<\/a>, a white farmer from central Mississippi\u2019s Jones County<\/a>, rebelled against the Confederate Army<\/a>. He spent years evading capture, living in swamps and the Piney Woods<\/a>. He married a white woman named Serena and later moved in with a former slave named Rachel. She was owned by Knight\u2019s family and carried their surname, and she had helped him during his days dodging the Confederate Army.<\/p>\n

He shared his life with both women.<\/p>\n

Today, Florence Knight Blaylock, 81, and her sister, Dorothy Knight Marsh, 69, are among those fascinated with the family legend. The sisters \u2014 who live in Soso \u2014 consider Newton and Rachel Knight their great-grandparents…<\/p>\n

…According to historian Victoria Bynum<\/a>, the county first acquired a reputation as the \u201cFree State of Jones<\/a>\u201d because of the plentiful land that could be claimed by squatters. The title gained new significance after Knight\u2019s rebellion against the Confederate Army.<\/p>\n

Some say Rachel was of African descent, while others say she was an American Indian. Still others say she had a mixture of African, American Indian and white ancestry. Confusion is increased by the existence of several photographs purporting to show Rachel \u2014 all of different women.<\/p>\n

The popular narrative holds that Serena, Newton\u2019s wife, was white, but others say she also had American Indian ancestry…<\/p>\n

…Davis Knight, a great-grandson of Newton Knight, Serena Knight and Rachel Knight, was tried in court on charges of illegal interracial marriage in 1948<\/a>. Edgar and Randy Williamson, Newton Knight\u2019s great-great-grandchildren, went to court in the 1960s after they were banned from a white school<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blaylock recalls her family being called names such as \u201chalf-breed\u201d and \u201cwhite negro,\u201d or worse, in the 1930s or \u201940s. She remembers being stared at and whispered about as a child, and watching a band of rowdy white men pull her father and brother out of the house to beat them…<\/p>\n

…Bynum, whose family also descends from Jones County, has written about the complicated social and legal terrain Knight\u2019s descendants were forced to negotiate<\/a>. Her work has been made more challenging by conflicting stories passed down by different branches of the Knight family…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mississippi rebel’s descendants seek family facts The Jackson Sun 2013-07-04 Laura Tillman, Associated Press SOSO, MISS. \u2014 One hundred and fifty years have passed since the Civil War, but in Mississippi, the descendants of a legendary rebel are still separating the facts of his life from fiction. Newton Knight, a white farmer from central Mississippi\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,1459,20],"tags":[2822,15118,15117,15116,1456,4374,15115,1453,1454],"class_list":["post-32141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-usa","tag-associated-press","tag-dorothy-knight-marsh","tag-florence-knight-blaylock","tag-jackson-sun","tag-newton-knight","tag-rachel-knight","tag-the-jackson-sun","tag-victoria-bynum","tag-victoria-e-bynum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}