My Own View on The Free State of Jones

Pat Young

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Featured Book Reviewer
Joined
Jan 7, 2013
Location
Long Island, NY
A movie is a novelization, no matter how closely it adheres to the facts. When I recently read Christian Samito’s new book Lincoln and the 13th Amendment, I was amazed at how much of what Lincoln said in Spielberg’s movie of that same name was taken directly from the historical record. Yet even those words, which Lincoln may have actually spoken, were delivered as the director or Daniel Day Lewis imagined them. Even a film about the most well-documented American of the 19th Century has to be a fictional version of the real story. How much more so a film about a yeoman farmer, his wife and friends, and dozens of nearly nameless blacks living in between slavery and freedom?

Our historical myths are usually constructed around the rich and the powerful. George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Jefferson all started life with advantages that most people of their era did not share. They wielded great power and effected the lives of millions. Folks like the rest of us are rarely the focus of popular history, let alone films about history. The Free State of Jones tells the story of one community that most of us would never have heard of without the attention given to it by historian Victoria Bynum and the film’s director Gary Ross.

We watch civil wars around the world, from Syria, to Somalia, to El Salvador and the Philippines and we understand the brutality and divisiveness of these conflicts. Wars where neighbors butcher neighbors and children are forced to be soldiers. Yet we imagine that our own Civil War was somehow the exception, that united Northerners and united Southerners fought in defined battlefields where civilians were somehow spared the worst effects of war. Real civil wars are infinitely more complex.

Free State of Jones initially focuses on white men from Jones County, Mississippi who objected to their state’s secession from the Union, did not profit from the enslavement of black Mississippians, and who were kept in the Confederate army by fear of violent retribution. When one of these men, Newt Knight, deserts the army and heads home, he becomes the focal point of a band of rebels against the Rebellion that quickly grows to include blacks on the run from slavery.

This movie shows the reality of a civil war where there is no home front. Confederate cavalry fight local whites to take the supplies poor farm families need to live through the winter. Blacks hoping for freedom are tortured. Women are attacked by soldiers and seek deadly revenge against their despoilers.

The core of this film is based on rock solid fact. The dialogue and some of the incidents are conjecture. Unfortunately, the poor do not maintain historical societies to memorialize their heritage. That does not mean that they have no history. But the spaces between the lines have to be filled in if a coherent film is to be made. Free State of Jones does a credible job of showing us that history of the poor.

The post-war period, the final third of the film, is the most interesting part. Newt Knight emerges from guerrilla resistance in the swamps to work in alliance with local white Unionists and blacks to try to craft a community where children, and adults, can receive an education, be protected in their personal liberties, and vote as they please. Progress is undermined by the new president, Andrew Johnson, who allows the old Confederate oligarchs to retake power. Blacks become the objects of a new wave of white terrorism and many of them are forced into conditions of near-slavery.

When Congress takes control of Reconstruction away from the president, the U.S. army steps in to protect the rights of African Americans. The film depicts a high level of black activism during this second phase of Reconstruction. Black voter registration campaigns and workers’ rights organization are stirring examples of the freedom struggle. Even though the gains would be made at the expense of black blood, and we know that many of the gains will be reversed, it is difficult not share the sense of hope of the people of Jones.

Over time, Northern voters waiver in their commitment to protect black civil rights. Newt’s white allies slip back into the racism they were raised with. Skin color reasserts itself as the primary sorter of political ties. A man need only look at his hands to know who he is going to vote for. By 1876 the experiment is over.

Knight’s own family is mixed race in a state that says that a child with seven white great grandparents is black and thereby disenfranchised. The film shows the long reach of the Civil War into the mid-20th Century when an apparently white descendant of Newt faces years of prison time for marrying a white woman.

This is a good film with fine performances from several cast members. It is not perfect. Several performances are uneven. Director Gary Ross is a little too engaged in showing us what a Southern swamp is like. This slows the film down. The violence is intermittent, but it can be disturbingly realistic and may make some viewers turn away.

It is also a rare film. Slavery and the Civil War are common subjects for contemporary filmmakers. This film brings us a side of the war and post-war that most Americans are completely unfamiliar with.
 
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