For many years Hollywood has depicted major events in history on the big screen. However, “major” history is constituted by what the populous and those in power want to be remembered as major history. In recent years, movies have been released that uncover the parts of history that are swept under the rug for whatever reason. The Free State of Jones is a movie that depicts one of these events. However, the film is not accurate enough to be considered a legitimate nonfiction piece.
The film was directed by Gary Ross, who was also involved in Seabiscuit and The Hunger Games. Released in 2012, The Free State of Jones does not aim to capture audiences with a strong showing of violence and explosions but instead follows the story of a struggle amongst lower-class Southern farmers, regardless of skin color. Newton Knight is the protagonist of the story, a white Confederate medic. Knight is poor, and from the beginning of the film, it is easy to decipher that he is not in support of the Confederacy and its war effort. In a short period of time his nephew, Daniel is shot and killed in the Battle of Corinth, and the Twenty Negro Law is enacted. These things only added to his angst toward the Confederate cause. The Twenty Negro Law states that any man in ownership of twenty or more slaves will be exempt from the Confederate draft. Knight then returns home a deserter to find his son deathly ill. He and his wife Serena cannot go to a doctor because he will be arrested, so a local house slave named Rachel is called to the farm to heal the child. At this point, the setting shifts to 1947, with Knight’s great-great-grandson sitting in court on trial for his unlawful marriage to a white woman. This is the first of a few setting changes between the Civil War and the 1940s, and this is enough to determine that at some point Rachel and Newton Knight conceive a child. After the healing of Knight’s original child, Knight seeks refuge in a local swamp to avoid being hanged. He meets a runaway slave named Moses, who Knight helps break a metal collar off of his neck. Over the next couple of months, Knight and a slowly growing number of white farmers/black slaves start to carry out attacks on Confederate soldiers who had stolen goods from local farmers. Eventually, the militia is able to take the town of Ellisville. At this juncture, Knight begins to recite the rights of citizens in the newly formed Free State of Jones from the Ellisville County courthouse steps. By 1865, the militia is still alive and well. As emancipation becomes a reality, Moses is able to find his wife and child, and Newton is able to live with his family. However, the freedmen’s right to forty acres and a mule is rescinded shortly after being freed. Moses’s son is taken by slave owners who put him to work under the law of “apprenticeship,” a state law enacted to keep slavery alive. When Knight tries to intervene he is arrested and put on trial. However, during the trial, Knight stands up and simply offers to pay for the “apprentice,” mocking the fact that he can simply buy this person and annul the charges against him. The slave owner agrees without hesitation. During this time Rachel gives birth to her and Newton’s child. Newton’s original wife Serena is even present in helping raise this child. Due to laws similar to apprenticeship in Mississippi, the South is placed under martial law. Increased activity from the Ku Klux Klan has forced the insurgence of federal troops. Moses becomes a victim of this increased aggression. He was in the cotton fields gathering information from the farmers when he is cornered by Klan members and hanged. In response, Newton and his followers set out to take advantage of their newly enacted right to vote. After voting Republican, the group learns that the Democratic candidate had won by a landslide. The movie concludes with a final scene from 1947, where Knight’s descendant is offered a plea deal stating he must annul his marriage and leave Mississippi due to him being one-eighth black. In an almost poetic ending, Knight refuses and is arrested. He is released shortly after incarceration to avoid conflict with the federal government.
After reading the above synopsis it is evident that Gary Ross’s The Free State of Jones depicts the story of a little-known rebellion that occurred within the short-lived Confederacy. The film does an excellent job of keeping historical context involved by placing important information such as battle location or current time frame in important scenes. With a budget of fifty million dollars, Ross and his team spared no expense in trying to bring the audience into the time period. From the beginning of the film, viewers are met with a number of negative circumstances that stem from war. One cannot help but empathize with Knight and his associates. The depiction of the battle of Corinth shows dead bodies being trampled on, heads being decapitated, and other gruesome acts that remind viewers that war is an unholy thing. Newton’s character took along with the mood of those opening scenes. He visibly carries his angst for the confederacy, and while it is commonplace to assume that there is a more distinct polarization between the North and South, many Southerners were Union loyalists and some Northerners were Confederate loyalists at the time. Also, dialogue exchanged between Newton and his followers throughout the movie speaks the voice of his unheard demographic during the late 1800s. In the same way that black people did not have a place in history, poor people did not have a place in history either. In an exchange between Newton and another soldier, the man states (in reference to the Twenty Negro Law) that “This law … makes it a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” This is a very powerful statement in describing the war from the viewpoint of a poor farmer. In hindsight, this comment holds a lot of truth and is getting at one of the themes that the movie tries to portray; that this time period privileged white men more than any other point in American history.
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Regardless of what the movie portrays, it is important to do research and figure out what is just a dramatization and what is fact. In the case of The Free State of Jones, the film is not very accurate if you are looking for something deeply informative. There are many differences between the true story of Newton Knight and Gary Ross’s depiction. For example, it is widely believed that Newton Knight did not enlist out of fear, but more so because he just wanted to be a soldier. This was possibly changed in the movie in order to play into his persona of a natural-born defector. Also, the movie’s portrayal of Daniel is fictional. It is possible that Daniel is meant to be representative of something, but it is unclear. Moses is also a fictional character, who may be representative of black and white cooperation for a greater purpose. Lieutenant Barbour, a significant antagonist, is also fictional. An interesting event that was left out of the movie is Knight being captured. In 1863, Knight was arrested and tortured for desertion. This may have been left out of the movie due to limited screen time or the lack of information regarding his incarceration and escape.
Diversity could not be a more prevalent topic in this film. Gary Ross and his writers had many choices to make regarding dialogue and relations between black and white people. Given that the film’s plot champions emancipation, most of the dialogue among the movie’s protagonists is with good intentions. However, the antagonists, consisting of Confederate troops and their supporters are often violent or aggressive. This violence is vulgar in nature for a reason. There were multiple scenes of lynching in the film, as well as threats of sexual assault and rape directed at Rachel from her master. These scenes were meant to be powerful and to show the tragedy that occurs when people are divided and polarized.
Overall, The Free State of Jones was not very historically accurate. While the overall plot held a significant amount of truth, many of the relationships between characters were fictional in order to sell more tickets. For example, Lieutenant Barbour and Moses were both fictional characters, and their relationships were a dominant force in the film. There is not enough focus on the history of the event. Overall, anyone who is wanting to learn the full and true story of the American civil war.
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