{"id":43193,"date":"2015-10-12T00:14:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T00:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=43193"},"modified":"2015-10-12T00:14:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T00:14:45","slug":"tap-roots-1948-a-review-of-the-first-free-state-of-jones-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=43193","title":{"rendered":"Tap Roots (1948): A Review of the first \u201cFree State of Jones\u201d movie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/renegadesouth.wordpress.com\/2015\/10\/11\/tap-roots-1948-a-review-of-the-first-free-state-of-jones-movie\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tap Roots (1948): A Review of the first \u201cFree State of Jones\u201d movie<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/renegadesouth.wordpress.com\" target=\"_blank\">Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners<\/a><br \/>\n2015-10-11<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.txstate.edu\/history\/people\/faculty\/bynum.html\" target=\"_blank\">Vikki Bynum<\/a><\/strong>, Emeritus Professor of History<br \/>\n<em>Texas State University, San Marcos<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/renegadesouth.wordpress.com\/2015\/10\/11\/tap-roots-1948-a-review-of-the-first-free-state-of-jones-movie\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/2\/22\/Tap_Roots_lobby_card.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As we await the release of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1124037\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Free State of Jones<\/a><\/em>, I thought it might be fun to visit an earlier movie similarly inspired by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Newton_Knight\" target=\"_blank\">Newt Knight<\/a> and the Knight band\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\">Civil War<\/a> uprising. <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tap_Roots\" target=\"_blank\">Tap Roots<\/a><\/em>, adapted from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_H._Street\" target=\"_blank\">James Street\u2019s<\/a> 1942 novel of the same name, was released by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Universal_International_Pictures\" target=\"_blank\">Universal International Pictures<\/a> in August, 1948.<\/p>\n<p>As I searched the internet, I quickly discovered that <em>New York Times<\/em> reviewer Tom Pryor had been anything but impressed by the movie. \u201cChecking the accuracy of historical detail in <em>Tap Roots<\/em>, the romanticized Civil War drama,\u201d he wrote, . . . \u201cwould serve no special purpose,\u201d presumably because, he added, \u201cclich\u00e9s, oral and visual,\u201d had produced a drama whose characters exhibited no \u201cindividuality or substance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although I had read the novel <em>Tap Roots<\/em> many years ago, I had never seen the movie\u2014until now. After viewing seven of the eight sections of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UojdCi6tqD8&amp;list=PLIB18CNiAgFWjFiaV1Mfop2nDSmsSOfUG\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Tap Roots<\/em> on YouTube<\/a> over the space of two days, I have to say, Pryor was correct. Moviegoers learned little to nothing about the important story of Southern Unionism in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jones_County,_Mississippi\" target=\"_blank\">Jones County, Mississippi<\/a>, from this production&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire review <a href=\"https:\/\/renegadesouth.wordpress.com\/2015\/10\/11\/tap-roots-1948-a-review-of-the-first-free-state-of-jones-movie\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tap Roots (1948): A Review of the first \u201cFree State of Jones\u201d movie Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners 2015-10-11 Vikki Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History Texas State University, San Marcos As we await the release of The Free State of Jones, I thought it might be fun to visit an earlier movie similarly inspired [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,1459,20],"tags":[21384,21383,1457,1456,13966,2317,21385,1453,1454,14118],"class_list":["post-43193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-usa","tag-james-h-street","tag-james-street","tag-newt-knight","tag-newton-knight","tag-renegade-south","tag-renegade-south-histories-of-unconventional-southerners","tag-tap-roots","tag-victoria-bynum","tag-victoria-e-bynum","tag-vikki-bynum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43193","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=43193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43194,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43193\/revisions\/43194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}