Free state of Jones

[Captain]

Anyone else seen this movie?
It really makes him out to be a hero, but if you read up on him that's sorta a stretch.
He lives with his white wife part of the time and on the other side of the farm lived with his black wife some. Had bunches of kids by both wimmins' and each woman had several kids by other men?
They made it appear he stood up for 'Mercia against the confederacy, but local stories and history would lend him a traitor?
All in all a good "movie" is you don't mind a Hollywood twist to history...

[quercus alba]

Don't watch such hypocrisy. Slavery as terrible as it was was simply a lever to motivate emotion. I strongly suspicion taxes from tobacco and cotton had more to do with the actual reason for that war.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Anyone else seen this movie?
It really makes him out to be a hero, but if you read up on him that's sorta a stretch.
He lives with his white wife part of the time and on the other side of the farm lived with his black wife some. Had bunches of kids by both wimmins' and each woman had several kids by other men?
They made it appear he stood up for 'Mercia against the confederacy, but local stories and history would lend him a traitor?
All in all a good "movie" is you don't mind a Hollywood twist to history...

Is this about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington or someone else?

BKB

[Captain]

Agreed. States rights was the big issue of the time and reason for secession. The ending of slavery (which I agree slavery was wrong) was the punishment for the South.

Heres some of the history of the guy;
"After the Civil War, Knight took up with his grandfather’s former slave Rachel; they had five children together. Knight also fathered nine children with his white wife, Serena, and the two families lived in different houses on the same 160-acre farm. After he and Serena separated—they never divorced—Newt Knight caused a scandal that still reverberates by entering a common-law marriage with Rachel and proudly claiming their mixed-race children.

The Knight Negroes, as these children were known, were shunned by whites and blacks alike. Unable to find marriage partners in the community, they started marrying their white cousins instead, with Newt’s encouragement. (Newt’s son Mat, for instance, married one of Rachel’s daughters by another man, and Newt’s daughter Molly married one of Rachel’s sons by another man.) An interracial community began to form near the small town of Soso, and continued to marry within itself.


Georgeanne, Rachel’s daughter by another white man. After Rachel died, Newt and Georgeanne had children. “He was a family man all right!” said Marsh. “I guess that’s why he had three of them."


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-free-state-jones-180958111/#VqTBiLIk1dWugGUI.99
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[Captain]

Is this about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington or someone else?

BKB

It's about Newton Knight of Jones Mississippi.
Read this article. It's right in YOUR wheelhouse.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-free-state-jones-180958111/

[Chicken Dinner]

Yes, states rights. The right to enslave people because of their color. 💩

(Can you tell I've been working on my SD badge lately?)

[Captain]

SD'er. No states rights as in all products produced in the South (agriculture) were subject to additional tax northern products (industrial) were not.

[BarryBobPosthole]

I'll check it out. I have to say, I'm not a real Matthew McConawhosit fan. The exception i'll make is his work in True Detective. Other than that, I can't think of a movie I really liked him in. U-571 was fair.

As for this Knight fellow, these days we'd call his farm a compound and he'd get smoked by the law for polygamy among other things. Like you, Ihardlysee that a reason to make hom into some kind of hero.

BKB

[airbud7]

mcconaughey was good in> A Time to Kill <

[Captain]

Me either Barry.
Read the article I linked above. It's sorta a good read and interesting. The movie twisted many of the facts and made him out to be some sorta white Martin Luther King. But the real facts don't support it.
A decent movie but very careless with the facts and actual events....

[airbud7]

The film grossed $23 million against its $50 million production budget/ heck of a lose right there....I will watch it though.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Pretty interesting. This Knight fellow was a few decades later, but in the early to mid 1800s it was common for people along the frontier to play fast and loose with marriage vows. Sam Houston comes to mind when I read about Knight. Houstone married a white woman, resigned his governorship of Tennessee when they split but never divorced, moved to Arkansas Territory (what is now eastern Oklahoma) and married a Cherokee woman, moved to Mexico (now Texas), converted to Catholic so he could own land, married yet another woman and had a passel of kids. And he never divorced any of them.
The French who founded New Orleans and St Louis commonly had indian and white wives and this occured well into the mid 1800s.

And on the secessation part, have you ever heard of the State of Franklin? I'm sure being from North Carolin you have. that subject would make a dandy movie!

BKB

BKB

[Captain]

Oh yea, about a hundred year earlier. It was part of NC then, now part of Tennessee. I think Dollywood is in part that was involved.

[airbud7]

Dolly got some nice cookies Too! or should I say...>