--- title: Free State of Jones: Why You Hadn't Heard the Story Before description: One historian contends that this slice of history—now the inspiration for a movie starring Matthew McConaughey—was deliberately hidden canonical: https://time.com/4377951/free-state-of-jones-true-story/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-06-23T16:00:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T22:46:04.454Z article:section: History og:title: Why You Probably Hadn't Heard the Real 'Free State of Jones' Story Before og:description: One historian contends that this slice of history was deliberately hidden og:url: https://time.com/4377951/free-state-of-jones-true-story/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt35a85e06c0191a18/698898f8428a9e046ecd324c/jones.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: FREE STATE OF JONES og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why You Probably Hadn't Heard the Real 'Free State of Jones' Story Before twitter:description: One historian contends that this slice of history was deliberately hidden twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt35a85e06c0191a18/698898f8428a9e046ecd324c/jones.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why You Probably Hadn't Heard the Real _Free State of Jones_ Story Before > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jun 23, 2016 4:00 PM UTC  Mahershala Ali andMatthew McConaughey star in FREE STATE OF JONES Mahershala Ali andMatthew McConaughey star in FREE STATE OF JONES Murray Close—STX Productions  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jun 23, 2016 4:00 PM UTC The American Civil War has been combed over in popular culture countless times, but the true story that inspired the new film [_Free State of Jones_](http://time.com/3827295/matthew-mcconaughey-free-state-of-jones/), out Friday, may still surprise some viewers. It’s not the kind of thing commonly taught in textbooks: the [story of Newton “Newt” Knight](http://civilwarstudies.org/articles/Vol%5F10/newton-knight.shtm) (played by Matthew McConaughey in the film), a man who, when the South seceded, seceded right back. He and his fellow [“Southern Yankees”](https://books.google.com/books?id=l0lHAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA663&lpg=PA663&dq=%22and+resolved+to+resist+by+force+of+arms+all+efforts%22&source=bl&ots=uQKc7hZhyh&sig=Y9bjcxnmDDxtGUSbr3g7KWdDpOE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGhOjM%5FrzNAhXDLyYKHUQiBj0Q6AEIMDAE#v=onepage&q=%22and%20resolved%20to%20resist%20by%20force%20of%20arms%20all%20efforts%22&f=false)—both black and white—tried to start their own pro-Union “free state” in Jones County, Miss. If you haven’t heard about Knight before, there may be a very particular reason. Jim Kelly, a local historian who is a descendent of Newton Knight’s and consulted on the film, argues that the story of Knight—like the stories of many other white Southerners who rejected the Confederacy—was deliberately erased. As Kelly explains, even as he researched and taught history in the very area that had once held the “free state,” the tales he heard about Newton Knight all followed one narrative: Knight was a terrible person, so bad he wasn’t worth thinking about. But the word about Knight was so bad that Kelly figured it couldn’t possibly be right. “I noticed that so many different writers all said the same story, almost verbatim, to the point where it was a red flag,” he says. “Being trained as a historian, that struck me. \[That means\] there’s more here than we’re aware of.” About a decade ago, he revisited the topic—and found that he was right. After the post-Civil War [Reconstruction](http://time.com/3849227/meereen-reconstruction/) period, which ended in the mid-1870s, those in power in the South led a sweeping effort to return the balance of power to the political and racial elites who had held sway before the war. During that time, Kelly says, Southern Democrats won “the victor’s right to history”—and Northern politicians were eager to put the past behind them, too. The result was that stories that didn’t conform to the version of the Civil War preferred by those in power were hidden. Naturally, those taboo stories would include anything about Southerners being divided about slavery and secession. The effort to highlight only positive stories about slavery and the Confederacy was particularly urgent for those who had held high ranks in the secessionist forces and feared they might be executed for treason if the North didn’t see things their way. After a generation or two of “selective memory,” stories like that can begin to sound like the truth, Kelly says. “The propaganda job was so effective,” Kelly says. “\[Knight’s\] memory was buried to uphold the lost-cause mythology of the war.” [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) Today, Kelly describes Knight as an American patriot who “didn’t go with the program as far as race was concerned”—especially in his choice to marry his wife [Rachel, a former slave](http://time.com/4358095/). There’s proof in TIME’s own archives that the echoes of Knight’s story passed all the way down to, as the magazine put it, “the children’s children.” In 1948, an article [told the story](http://time.com/vault/issue/1948-12-27/page/20/) of Davis Knight and Junie Lee Spradley, a young married couple living in Mississippi who had been shocked when he was arrested for the crime of interracial marriage: --- > “” --- The Supreme Court wouldn’t rule that anti-miscegenation laws were [unconstitutional](http://time.com/4364686/loving-day-loving-v-virginia/) until 1967, in the [landmark](http://time.com/4362508/loving-v-virginia-personas/) case Loving v. 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