{"id":39773,"date":"2015-02-01T23:40:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T23:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39773"},"modified":"2016-07-16T19:55:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T19:55:22","slug":"the-life-and-death-of-davis-knight-after-state-vs-knight-1948","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39773","title":{"rendered":"The Life and Death of Davis Knight after State vs. Knight (1948)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Life and Death of Davis Knight after <\/strong><\/em>State vs. Knight<\/strong> (1948)<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners<\/a>
\n2009-04-08<\/p>\n

Victoria E. Bynum<\/strong><\/a>, Emeritus Professor of History
\nTexas State University, San Marcos<\/em><\/p>\n

Davis Knight, the great-grandson of the infamous \u201cFree State of Jones<\/a>\u201d guerrilla, Newt Knight<\/a>, became the centerpiece of his own drama some 25 years after the death of his notorious ancestor. Although Davis was descended from Newt and his wife, Serena, both of whom were white, he was also the great-grandson of Rachel Knight, a former slave of Newt\u2019s grandfather. And although Davis was white in appearance, because of his descent from Rachel, he was defined as black by his white neighbors. Some of those neighbors did not take kindly to Davis Knight\u2019s marriage in 1946 to Junie Lee Spradley, a local white woman. In 1948, Davis ended up in court, accused of having married across the color line (a crime in several states until 1967<\/a>). Despite a vigorous defense by Attorney Quitman Ross, a jury pronounced Davis guilty<\/a>. Convicted of miscegenation<\/a>, the Ellisville<\/a> Court sentenced him to five years in Mississippi\u2019s<\/a> notorious Parchman prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Attorney Ross immediately appealed the decision on grounds the court had failed to prove that Davis had 1\/8th or more African ancestry, and won his case. The Mississippi State Supreme Court overturned the lower court\u2019s decision and remanded Davis\u2019s case for retrial\u2013a retrial that never took place. In legal terms, the High Court ruled in this important case, the \u201cone drop rule<\/a>\u201d did not determine one\u2019s racial identity, regardless of social custom. Davis Knight thus escaped going to prison and, for the rest of his life, lived as a white man…<\/p>\n

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

The Life and Death of Davis Knight after State vs. Knight (1948) Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners 2009-04-08 Victoria E. Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History Texas State University, San Marcos Davis Knight, the great-grandson of the infamous \u201cFree State of Jones\u201d guerrilla, Newt Knight, became the centerpiece of his own drama some 25 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,1467,8,1459,6462,20],"tags":[4518,4519,20762,1457,1456,19220,4374,13966,2317,1453,1454],"class_list":["post-39773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-davis-knight","tag-junie-lee-spradley","tag-mississippi","tag-newt-knight","tag-newton-knight","tag-quitman-ross","tag-rachel-knight","tag-renegade-south","tag-renegade-south-histories-of-unconventional-southerners","tag-victoria-bynum","tag-victoria-e-bynum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39773","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=39773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47876,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39773\/revisions\/47876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}