{"id":48280,"date":"2016-07-16T00:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T00:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48280"},"modified":"2016-07-16T01:19:47","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T01:19:47","slug":"black-and-white-in-the-free-state-of-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48280","title":{"rendered":"Black and White in the Free State of Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.processhistory.org\/free-state-of-jones-2\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Black and White in the Free State of Jones<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.processhistory.org\" target=\"_blank\">Process: A Blog For American History<\/a><br \/>\n2016-07-14<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/history\/faculty\/nina-silber\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Nina Silber<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of History<br \/>\n<em>Boston University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll confess: I was fully prepared to be disappointed with the recently-released <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Free_State_of_Jones_(film)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Free State of Jones<\/em><\/a>. Not out of any disrespect toward the excellent historical scholarship behind the film, including <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/vikki_bynum\" target=\"_blank\">Victoria Bynum\u2019s<\/a> superb <a href=\"http:\/\/uncpress.unc.edu\/browse\/book_detail?title_id=3767\" target=\"_blank\">book by the same name<\/a> which helped inspire filmmaker <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gary_Ross\" target=\"_blank\">Gary Ross\u2019<\/a> initial interest. Rather, my skepticism stems from a long history of bad <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Civil_War\" target=\"_blank\">Civil War<\/a> films, a history that includes truly atrocious movies like <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Birth_of_a_Nation\" target=\"_blank\">Birth of a Nation<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gone_with_the_Wind_(film)\" target=\"_blank\">Gone With the Wind<\/a>,<\/em> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gods_and_Generals_(film)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Gods and Generals<\/em><\/a>. As these films attest, Civil War film-making has frequently been an exercise in myth-making and obfuscation: these movies have, repeatedly, erased the central problem of slavery; ignored the critical role of African American slaves and freedpeople in fighting for emancipation; and portrayed Southern whites as the victims of a tyrannical Northern onslaught, both during but especially after the war had ended. These movies fit in a long history of what, in <a href=\"http:\/\/jah.oxfordjournals.org\/content\/103\/1\/59.full.pdf+html\" target=\"_blank\">my recent <em>JAH<\/em> article<\/a>, I refer to as \u201cthe imagined reconstitution of the nation,\u201d an imagining that privileged the sectional reunification of whites while pushing African Americans to the sidelines. <em>Free State of Jones<\/em>, in stark contrast, generally gets the central historical narrative right and even manages to tell some complicated history in a moving and compelling manner. Most notably, it effectively pushes back on some of the most deeply entrenched myths of all: on the true meaning and significance of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction_Era\" target=\"_blank\">Reconstruction<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.processhistory.org\/free-state-of-jones-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black and White in the Free State of Jones Process: A Blog For American History 2016-07-14 Nina Silber, Professor of History Boston University I\u2019ll confess: I was fully prepared to be disappointed with the recently-released Free State of Jones. Not out of any disrespect toward the excellent historical scholarship behind the film, including Victoria Bynum\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,8,1459,6940,20],"tags":[5505,1457,1456,24495,20117,1453,24496],"class_list":["post-48280","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-gary-ross","tag-newt-knight","tag-newton-knight","tag-nina-silber","tag-process-a-blog-for-american-history","tag-victoria-bynum","tag-victoria-e-bynums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48280","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=48280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48281,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48280\/revisions\/48281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}