Newt Knight:
The face of the Free State of Jones
“Captain” Newton ( Newt) Knight has been described as a villain, a hero, a patriot and a traitor. And while he may not be a familiar name to many, he soon will be with the release of Gary Ross’ epic action- drama Free State of Jones.
The movie starring Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyer’s Club, The Lincoln Lawyer) as Newt Knight; Keri Russell ( Waitress, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) as his wife Serena; Gugu Mbatha- Raw ( Concussion, Beyond the Lights) as his common- law wife Rachel; and Maherhsala Ali ( The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1) as runaway slave Moses Washington.
Directed by Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville, The Hunger Games) the movie tells the extraordinary story of a little- known episode in American history, during which this fearless Mississippi farmer led an unlikely band of poor whites and runaway slaves in an armed rebellion against the Confederacy during the height of the Civil War. The vastly outnumbered group established an indomitable rebel regiment deep in rural Mississippi’s impenetrable swamps in the remote Piney Woods area, giving them a tactical advantage.
Free State of Jones has been a project of intense passion for Ross, who spent 10 years on bringing it to fruition. “When I first heard the story of Newt Knight, it was amazing to me that this unique hero had been kind of lost to history,” he says. “Newt Knight makes sense of the American Civil War at its essence, which is that it was fundamentally a moral struggle. He was such a progressive forward-thinking individual and totally unique in his own era. I wanted to tell the story to illustrate the fact that the South was not entirely unified in its support of the Confederacy or slavery.”
Getting to the truth of Newt Knight’s story isn’t easy. As Ross notes, “In going out to learn more about the man, what was less known about him was even more remarkable.”
Historian Jim Kelly, a professor of American history at Jones County Junior College, is one of several scholars who helped Ross in his research. “The facts have been buried so deep and spun in so many different ways that generations knew very little about what really happened, and who Knight really was,” he says.
Some s t ories portray Knight as a Southern Robin Hood: a non-conformist who stole from the rich to help the downtrodden farmers, and a stalwart fighter against the Confederacy.
But there are those — including a grand- niece who was a die- hard segregationist and white supremacist — who vilified Knight as a manipulator and murderer who undermined the fabric of the Confederacy.
The most certain thing anyone can say about Captain Newt Knight was that he was a man of contradictions. As with many folk legends, the truth lies somewhere in between.
The facts of his life are scant. He was born in 1837 (although that is even debated) in Jones County. His father was a shoemaker; and while his grandfather was a slaveholder, his father was not, as was the case for many residents of Jones County. Knight was a die-hard, non-drinking Primitive Baptist. In 1858, he married Serena Turner and established a small farm in nearby Jasper County.
Knight enlisted in the Confederate army in 1862. Not long after, he joined other deserters who returned home to save their family farms from ruin at the hands of tax agents, who were stripping landowners of their possessions.
The worst affront to these disillusioned soldiers was the passing of the Twenty Negro Law that exempted wealthy plantation owners and family members from militar y ser vice if t hey owned 20 slaves or more. This led to the declaration by dissenters that the Civil War was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”
Things did not go well for Knight and his family on his return. In early 1863, he was arrested and jailed for desertion, and his homestead and farm were destroyed, leaving his family destitute.
That same year, a band of former slaves, runaways and yeoman farmers from neighbouring Jones, Perry and Jasper counties was organized to protect the area from Confederate authorities and tax collectors. Knight was unanimously elected leader of what was to be called the Knight Company. This indomitable rebel regiment set up camp deep in rural Mississippi’s impenetrable swamps.
Between 1863 and 1865, the Knight Company engaged in 14 skirmishes with the Confederates. In 1864, tragedy struck when Confederate soldiers hunted down and executed 10 members of the group. The pinnacle of their efforts was declaring the Free State of Jones in 1864.
Knight was hardly a paragon of virtue throughout his life. He was said to be charismatic and intelligent. But he was also ruthless and not averse to killing those who stood in his way. A case in point was Knight’s “coldblooded” murder of Major Amos McLemore, a powerful Jones County Confederate officer.
A key supporter of the Knight Company was Rachel, a former slave who eventually became Knight’s commonlaw wife. Together they had several children ( possibly as many as nine). From that union grew one of the first mixed- race communities in southeastern Mississippi, despite the fact that interracial marriages were banned in the state.
Rachel died at the age of 49. Knight carried on, championing the cause of the Reconstruction government and civil rights until he died in 1922 at the age of 84. Defiant to the end, Knight made a final statement to the world. He asked to be buried next to Rachel in an all- black cemetery in direct violation of Mississippi law at the time.
While the Free State of Jones has gained the status of folk legend, Newt Knight left behind a more important and lasting legacy: he openly crossed the sexual colour lines at a time when this was forbidden or at least hidden from the world. For the staunchest members of Southern society, that was far more treasonous than his rebellion against the Confederacy.
His relationship with Rachel was so offensive to his contemporaries and to some who came after him that the story was all but buried by historians for decades. In 1949, Rachel’s existence was brought to the fore, however, when Knight’s great- grandson Davis was indicted and convicted for miscegenation (i.e. interbreeding of different races; Davis had married a white woman).
In Ross’ film, scenes of the State of Mississippi versus Davis Knight (played by Brian Lee Franklin) proceedings are referenced throughout the narrative. And while the courts ultimately failed to make the case against Davis on appeal, the story of Newt and Rachel Knight found its rightful place in history.
“As a filmmaker, you dream about finding a character like Newt Knight,” Ross says. “I am fortunate that I was able to find him and I’m incredibly fortunate that I’m able to tell this story against this size of a canvas.”