BOBBY HARRISON: Jones County lives with its complexity and its family ties across racial lines
Sitting in the dark of the theater, with its plush, roomy reserved-seating seats, part of me wanted to stand and yell to the strangers from Kentucky, “You see some people in Mississippi were fighting to end slavery during the Civil War.”
But the truth is that there is debate to this day of the intentions of Newt Knight, the leader of the rebellion in Jones County against the Confederacy. The question quite simply is whether Knight was fighting for a higher calling or just fighting against being involved in a war where he literally had no skin in the game in the sense he did not own slaves.
So I decided to be quiet. And besides, if I had gotten up and yelled there is a strong possibility I would have been thrown out of the theater at best and thrown in the Ashland City Jail at worst.
Daily Journal
7/7/16
Magnolia Tribune
