"Free State of Jones" (Corinth, Ellisville: house, tax, live)

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

Upcoming movie about a part of Mississippi history. Filmed in Louisiana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_of_Jones_(film)

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...nes-180958111/

[Desert kid]

Originally Posted by Mouldy Old Schmo

Upcoming movie about a part of Mississippi history. Filmed in Louisiana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_of_Jones_(film)

History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian

The only thing I don't want to see is this thing given the "Braveheart" treatment.

[Brucifer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_S...nes_%28film%29

Link was broken.

Fascinating story. Which of the books do you think would be the most balanced?

[viverlibre]

The facts concerning the "Free State of Jones" are much in question; however, this has the makings of being a good movie.

Prior to the Internet, the legend of the free state of jones was that the leaders of Jones County didn't agree with the confederacy and did not succeed from the union when the state did.

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by viverlibre

The facts concerning the "Free State of Jones" are much in question; however, this has the makings of being a good movie.

Prior to the Internet, the legend of the free state of jones was that the leaders of Jones County didn't agree with the confederacy and did not succeed from the union when the state did.

"secede"

[viverlibre]

Posting from an iPad ain't easy!!!

[Desert kid]

Alrighty everybody.

But I was able to see the movie. It gets some stuff partially right, but it kinda whitewashes Knight a little. It does portray Knight's desertion as a result of the 20 Negro Law and the Tax in Kind laws. No mention of Knight murdering his brother-in-law, Major McLemore's death is not the historical version because (SPOILERS!) in the movie during a church ambush Knight strangles McLemore with his own belt. Historically, McLemore was shot in the back at the Deason House in Ellisville. Knight was alleged to have fired the shot, but given it was in the middle of the night, and not mid-day like in the movie, but the movie does accurately portray the retribution against the "Knight Company" in the ensuing months after Knight rebels from the Confederacy in the swamps.

There's a "Battle of Ellisville" towards the end, and that's fictional too. When I first heard it described before the movie came out, I thought it would be a dramatized version of the Battle of Sal's Ferry in early 1865 that Knight did fight against Colonel (and later Governor) Lowrey. Turns out the "big engagements" outside of the Battle of Corinth are all fictional as well. Not to mention Knight's nephew in the 7th Mississippi Battalion, he was fictional too.

The movie then cuts to Knight and Rachael having his first wife Serena live on the property in Soso, but, she disappears after a few scenes, never mentioned again. His former-slave buddy, Moses Washington, also fictional, begins trying to register voters in Jones County until the Klan castrates and lynches him.

The movie also inter-cuts with scenes in the 1940's with Newt and Rachael's gggreat-grandson Davis Knight and his failure to get married because of Mississippi's "One Drop Rule". The marriage is later mentioned to have failed. But no mention that it was likely Newt and Serena's white grandkids that brought the whole thing out of the county's dark records because of some resentment that persisted towards Rachael in Knight's first set of kids.

So this whole thing was a halfway "Braveheart treatment".