Victoria E. Bynum, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 2001, 2016) (From the back cover: "Victoria Bynum traces the origins and legacy of the Jones Country uprising from the American Revolution to the modern civil rights movement. In bridging the gap between the legendary and the real Free State of Jones, she shows how the legend--what was told, what was embellished, and what was left out--reveals a great deal about the South's transition from slavery to segregation; the racial, gender, and class politics of the period; and the contingent nature of history and memory.").
Thomas Jefferson Knight & Ethel Knight, Free State of Jones and The Echo of the Black Horn: Two Sides of the Life and Activities of Captain Newt Knight, foreword by Jim Kelly (New York: Racehorse Publishing, 2016) (What kind of mentality does a person have to possess to embrace and articulate and rationalize the following vision, narrative? Is it mental illness (in the form, here, of white supremacy and racial segregation) or simply intellectual dishonesty? From Ethel Knight's The Echo of the Black Horn (1951): "Most of the slaves were deeply religious and attended every religious service. These loved their white folks and were in turn loved by them, as members of families, even an affection similar to blood relationship was not uncommon between master and slave." "The negroes expressed their joy and contentment by singing and shouting. Dancing was a favorite pastime in the quarters, and there was seldom one who worried, for in return for his labor, the master stood between him and responsibility. He had no cause for worry because his food was the same as that served to the master; he was clothed with the good coarse cloth of the loom, which the white mistress had taught the women to make, and there was warmth and comfort in the cabins where the slave were taught to follow their elders introspect and obedience." "But sometimes even the best master would be forced to sell off a slave for an objectionable reason. Some slaves were undesirable and refused to submit to discipline, and others were not trustworthy. These made up the largest group to be sold along with the numbers of good slaves 'sold down south' for profit. Many of the objectionable reasons were never mentioned, such as rape, and in many instances where a slave woman became a mistress of a white man, which was the only way of breaking off the liaison: sell the woman off and send her out of the country!" "Such a practice was horrible, since these unfortunate people were victims of circumstances, treated without any consideration whatsoever." Id. at 112. And now we have Alt-Right movement.).
Sally Jenkins & John Stauffer, The State of Jones: The Small Southern County that Seceded form the Confederacy (New York: Anchor Books, 2009).
