{"id":47857,"date":"2016-06-20T22:47:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T22:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47857"},"modified":"2016-06-20T22:49:42","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T22:49:42","slug":"on-the-free-state-of-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47857","title":{"rendered":"On The Free State Of Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

On The Free State Of Jones<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Huffington Post<\/a>
\n2016-06-20<\/p>\n

Steven Hahn<\/strong><\/a>, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History
\nUniversity of Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n

Three quarters of a century ago, \u201cGone with the Wind<\/a>,\u201d a film that mythologized an Old South<\/a> of wealthy planters and obedient slaves, premiered in Atlanta<\/a> amidst great fanfare and public interest. This week, a very different sort of film about the South of the Civil War<\/a> and Reconstruction era<\/a> \u2013 \u201cFree State of Jones<\/a>\u201d \u2014 will have its premiere, and as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the War and Reconstruction and struggle through our own time of social and racial divisiveness, the public would do very well to take the film\u2019s measure.<\/p>\n

That is because \u201cFree State of Jones,\u201d challenges our many misconceptions of the Civil War and Reconstruction and can promote a dialogue about what may have been possible more than a century ago \u2013 and what is very much possible in our own day. \u201cFree State of Jones\u201d is based on a true story of interracial resistance to the Confederacy<\/a> in Civil War Mississippi<\/a>. It is the story of how a white farmer from humble origins named Newton Knight<\/a> came to see how the Confederacy favored the rich planters at the expense of men and women like himself and chose to organize a rebellion aimed at establishing a terrain of freedom, a \u201cfree state,\u201d in the county of Jones<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…But Newton Knight eventually went further still. The strongest resistance to the Confederacy came, not from poor white folk, but from those who were destined to be its main victims: the slaves. In Mississippi and elsewhere in the Confederate South, they took the opportunity of the War to flee their plantations and farms, head to Union lines, or form maroons<\/a> in swamps and remote woodlands, denying slaveholders the labor and submission that had been expected. During his own battles with the Confederacy in rural Jones County<\/a>, Knight forged alliances with African Americans, most specifically a slave named Rachel with whom he developed an intimate relationship and eventually raised a family…<\/p>\n

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

On The Free State Of Jones The Huffington Post 2016-06-20 Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History University of Pennsylvania Three quarters of a century ago, \u201cGone with the Wind,\u201d a film that mythologized an Old South of wealthy planters and obedient slaves, premiered in Atlanta amidst great fanfare and public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,1459,6940,20],"tags":[10108,3883,1457,1456,4374,12740,2425],"class_list":["post-47857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-huffington-post","tag-jones-county","tag-newt-knight","tag-newton-knight","tag-rachel-knight","tag-steven-hahn","tag-the-huffington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47857","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=47857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47859,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47857\/revisions\/47859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}