{"id":48467,"date":"2016-07-29T00:30:58","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T00:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48467"},"modified":"2016-07-29T00:30:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T00:30:58","slug":"free-state-of-jones-capsizes-lost-cause-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48467","title":{"rendered":"Free State of Jones Capsizes Lost Cause Myths"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free State of Jones<\/strong> Capsizes Lost Cause Myths<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Process: A Blog For American History<\/a>
\n2016-07-12<\/p>\n

Matthew E. Stanley<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of History
\nAlbany State University, Albany, Georgia<\/em><\/p>\n

Reconstruction is perhaps the least understood period in American history, a distinction that has been both perpetuated by and reflected in popular culture since the late nineteenth century. Films in particular have gone from presenting the era through the Dunning<\/a> lens of rank white supremacy (The Birth of a Nation<\/em><\/a>, Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/a>, Tennessee Johnson<\/em><\/a>) to skipping straight to white reunion (Abraham Lincoln<\/em><\/a>, Ken Burns\u2019s<\/a> The Civil War<\/a><\/em>) to addressing its social achievements and betrayals through either subtle foreshadowing (Lincoln<\/em><\/a>, Glory<\/em><\/a>) or highbrowed metaphor (The Hateful Eight<\/em><\/a>). Director Gary Ross\u2019s<\/a> Free State of Jones<\/em><\/a>, however, which depicts the origins and aftermath of Newton Knight\u2019s<\/a> bigender and biracial anti-Confederate<\/a> insurgency in Jones County, Mississippi<\/a>, might be the first to properly and historically situate Reconstruction<\/a> in full relation to the war<\/a> itself, serving as a vigorous repudiation of Lost Cause<\/a> mythology.<\/p>\n

Consulted by and employing source material from historians including Eric Foner<\/a>, David Blight<\/a>, and Victoria Bynum<\/a>, Free State of Jones<\/em> presents a wartime regional counternarrrative that becomes a postwar national standard narrative. In other words, the events depicted both are and are not historically representative. Led by farmer-turned-renegade Knight, ably portrayed by a suitably angular Matthew McConaughey<\/a>, white members of the \u201cKnight Company\u201d are deserters and poor farmers who have rejected the Confederate \u201cTwenty Negro Law<\/a>\u201d and regressive property confiscation; its black constituents are self-emancipated slaves and intrepid spies with even greater interest in overthrowing the callous Southern plantocracy. Through a series of competently shot skirmishes and ambushes, this militant underclass slowly drives Confederate forces from a large swath of southeast Mississippi<\/a>. Persecuted by the Confederacy<\/a> and ignored by the Union, Knight\u2019s militia declares a \u201cFree State of Jones\u201d committed to principles of social and economic egalitarianism. His white wife and child having absconded, Knight falls for a mixed race slave, Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw<\/a>), and together they create a biracial community that still exists…<\/p>\n

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

Free State of Jones Capsizes Lost Cause Myths Process: A Blog For American History 2016-07-12 Matthew E. Stanley, Assistant Professor of History Albany State University, Albany, Georgia Reconstruction is perhaps the least understood period in American history, a distinction that has been both perpetuated by and reflected in popular culture since the late nineteenth century. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,1459,6940,20],"tags":[17251,16174,5505,3883,24625,24626,1457,1456,20117,4374,1453],"class_list":["post-48467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mississippi","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-david-blight","tag-eric-foner","tag-gary-ross","tag-jones-county","tag-matthew-e-stanley","tag-matthew-stanley","tag-newt-knight","tag-newton-knight","tag-process-a-blog-for-american-history","tag-rachel-knight","tag-victoria-bynum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48467","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=48467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48468,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48467\/revisions\/48468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}