The Free State of Jones, Movie Edition

“Bynum is to be saluted not only for her profound scholarship but for her evenhanded accounts of matters that remain volatile and controversial. . . . [This] book should be praised as an original and cogent piece of scholarship on a devilishly complicated and demanding subject.” — Washington Times

“Powerful, revisionist, and timely, Bynum’s book combines superb history with poignant analysis of historical memory and southern racial mores." — CHOICE

“An important book that may cause historians who are skeptical about putting too much stress on an 'inner' Civil War to rethink their position." — American Historical Review

“The Free State of Jones is clearly a story that needs to be told, and Bynum has done impressive research to bring it to a modern audience. She uses a wide range of social history sources to trace the long history not only of Newt Knight and his gang but also of their ancestors. She is interested in social structure, economic patterns, migration, religious revivals, family formation, and community relations — in short, a genealogy of the entire Jones County community before they became famous during and after the Civil War. This is an ambitious project that brings the Jones County community to life for scholars, students, and lay readers.” — Altina L. Waller, author of Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860–1900

“Local studies have made us increasingly aware of the many different ways in which southerners experienced the Civil War. Few communities fought as much of the war on their own terms or generated as distorted yet profound a legacy afterward as did the men and women of this renegade county in Mississippi’s Piney Woods. It’s a fascinating story, and Victoria Bynum tells it remarkably well.” — John C. Inscoe, coauthor of The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War