Thank you for your interest in my version of the Free State of Jones, and for taking the time to comment here on Renegade South.

Since you are a native of Jones County, I’d be surprised if you are not related to either a member of the Knight band, or to one of its active opponents.

My new book, The Long Shadow of the Civil War, also contains much on Newt Knight and Jones County. You can purchase it, or the earlier Free State of Jones (2001), on Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or directly from the publisher, University of North Carolina Press, at:

http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1694#reviews

Hope you have much success tracing your family tree.

Vikki

Vikki

Well, I have to say. This is the first time in my life that I have counted among my friends, a “gadfly”. I don’t quite know what to expect! (Happy New Year, by the way, and thanks for being a great “cyber” friend.)

I enjoyed this post very much because it is about you. I regret the genesis of the post, however, and can only add to the conversation that I do not trust the work of an historian who cannot see his or her own biases.

Many of the comments of these two authors reveal a shallow understanding of the history that they are portraying. In contrast, the comments of your contributors are very insightful. There also seems to be what almost amounts to a need, on the part of the two writers of State of Jones, to finally unmask the “real” you. I suppose that this would be so that you are discredited, once and for all (in their eyes), leaving their interpretation of the history of Newt and Rachel Knight as the valid interpretation. I cannot think of another reason for the continued attacks. The real you, of course, would be a neo Confederate, Lost Cause adherent, as all white Southerners, past and present, must, indeed, be, when all is said and done, according to some. (except, of course, for Newt Knight, a Northern abolitionist in disguise)

You know, and I know, that this is not so, and so do many other people. That it remain so, however, as a widely held perception in our collective national narrative of who we are, somehow serves a purpose, and I suspect that this is why the perception is so well entrenched and difficult to overcome.

I am not connected to Jones County, Mississippi through my ancestry. But I am connected to ancestors from the mountains of Virginia who have an intergenerational history of dissent, so, in a way, I am connected to the descendants of Jones County.

I have recently come back from a trip to Virginia renewed, after visiting the African American community in our area with which my family has been intimately connected for generations. I categorically take the word of the men and women from this community concerning who my ancestors were and who they were not, over that of a man or woman from outside of the community who thinks that he or she knows our history.

The men and women in this community experienced some of the worst hatred during Jim Crow, and they overcame it. Many of them were friends and colleagues of my parents and grandparents, and I consider them family, as they also consider me. I am who I am today because a part of my upbringing–and a big part of it, too–took place with the men and women from the African American community, in their world, on their terms. It was a privilege, is the only way that I can put it, and that is a gross understatement. Only they have the power and the authority to say to me what did or did not occur.

Always, I go to the community prepared to accept whatever pronouncement (or condemnation) that its members may have that might change the past as I know it on the spot. And always–always–the graciousness of spirit and the unconditional love that are shown to me by the members of my extended African American family bring only more love, and a deeper admiration and respect for a community that truly did lay the foundation for our nation’s history as the nation should be, and not as it became.

Only the African American community has the right to condemn, to be angry, to forgive, to not forgive, to be self righteous if they so choose, and to hold all accountable–and not the white community from any area of the nation. It is, in fact, an outrageous appropriation of African American history for one segment of the white population to condemn another segment of the white population based upon the history of slavery and race, since the entire country has a racist past, and present. Perhaps if anything good comes out of this controversy over Jones County, it will be this realization.

There are still plenty of actual neo Confederate Lost Cause adherents in the South, and their influence must be continually fought, not to mention racists who are extremely dangerous, as indicated in a previous comment. Yet, when attacks come against someone who is most definitely not a neo Confederate, such as you, it is time to speak out.

I find it very difficult to speak out in the blog forum, because the history that I know firsthand is so personal and did not come out of a book. Still, I do feel a need to speak out, and I do so. Thus, this comment.

Ironically, one of the reasons why your research is so important, is that you have defined who is and who is not a neo Confederate, and you have explored the historical roots that led to this development. Knowledge is power, and education is the key to preventing a constant repetition of the past. If more young white Southerners began to understand who their ancestors really were, and what slavery really was, the neo Confederate view of history would become obsolete. I think that this is, in fact, in the process of taking place, at least in my area.

Another look at the history of slavery in the North is warranted as well, along with the legacy of racism that grew out of that history. The most truthful, courageous, and poignant look at the history of slavery in the North that I have encountered is the exploration by members of the DeWolf family of the family’s slave trading past. As has been stated by several members of the DeWolf family: too many people see the North as free of this history, or as an area of the country that redeemed itself, once and for all, through the Civil War (which is true, to a certain extent, in my opinion, yet is a point that is totally lost when self righteousness enters the conversation)

As many new studies continue to be done, and as older historical works become more widely known, I believe that the burden of history will become the burden of all Americans, not just the burden of the African American community, whose members have borne the true burden of American history for centuries, and that the answer to the question of why racism still exists in every area of the United States will become quite apparent: we are still living with a false knowledge of the past, and very few are willing to search for our nation’s actual history, or to accept responsibility for the past when the actual history is finally known (For example, one study revealed that one in four white Northerners owned slaves in the years before slavery was abolished in the North. In addition, everyday people in the North not only bought “shares” in the slave trade, but made the chains and whips that white Southerners used to beat their slaves, even after slavery was abolished in the North. It is hard to believe that those white men and women of the North did not know what the shares they bought were for, or how the chains and whips that they helped to manufacture were to be used, just as it is impossible to believe, based upon overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that white Southerners did not beat, rape, and murder the men and women whom they held in bondage. These are but a few of the sobering facts that surely all Americans must address at some point. The African American community of the US has not only long addressed these facts; but lived the history, and it is up to the white community to stop passing the blame for racism from region to region. A man of Asian descent, and whose ancestors clearly were not slaveholders, put the case succinctly. He said that everyone in this nation–everyone–even recent immigrants, has a responsibility to African American men and women, and to Indigenous men and women to end the disparity that exists, because we all live in a prosperous nation due to a past that included the brutal taking of land, and the equally brutal enslavement of others. I agree with that assessment.)

In addition to taking the word of the African American community about the past over that of men and women with questionable motives, I also take the word of the dedicated, principled historians whom I have met in the blogosphere–many of them white Northerners–who understand what I have just said, and who know–and more importantly acknowledge–the complexity of our history, and who portray that history in its complexity. That takes courage as well, and I have seen plenty of courage displayed by historians who challenge even those in their own profession. When the history being portrayed begins to assume what I call a “formulaic” aspect, it is then that I know that the history is false.

I remember when schools were integrated. I remember the racial epithets that were hurled at my African American friends and family. And I remember being called some names myself. I also remember Boston, 1975, as was recently referenced by an historian for whom I have great respect on the site of one of your fellow bloggers, for whom I have equal respect, and I remember Watts, too. The entire country was embroiled in a racist hate fest in the 1960s and 1970s, and the ugly face of racism showed itself from Birmingham to South Boston to LA, and Memphis, and back to Birmingham. In addition, that racism was not (and still is not) confined to white vs. black, and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling himself or herself. Just last summer, a Cherokee friend of mine who wears his hair long and past his shoulders in the traditional manner, and sometimes in braids, depending upon ceremonial requirements, tried to get a room in four different motels on a trip out West with no luck. Finally, his wife (who is white) went to register, after the couple were totally exhausted, and they got a room. Again, that was in the year 2009. Not 1969. The racist past of our nation has not been overcome yet–not by a long shot.

I like what I perceive to be your definition of an intellectual, Vikki. And, (if I read you correctly) it coincides with my own definition–ie, a man or woman who is involved in, and actively engaged with, the world within which he or she lives. I formed my concept of the intellectual through my interaction with a couple who defected from Russia in the 1970s, and who introduced me to the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. To this couple (both of whom were friends of mine, and who attended Harvard) an intellectual was not bound by socio-economic class, and certainly not by either the possession, or lack of possession, of a degree. The American (and European) idea of the intellectual as a man or woman who is above others, was an idea foreign to them. Socio-economic class–and the idea of class in general–as a defining category that must be satisfactorily met in order for a man or woman to qualify as one who belongs to a group of people known as “intellectuals” was completely absent from their thinking. In fact, I am quite sure that this couple from Leningrad would consider a certain gadfly professor from a small Texas university to be an intellectual of the highest degree. I know that I do.

Thanks for your hard work, and for your lifelong devotion to your area of study, Vikki.

Didn’t mean to go long. It just happened. If the comment is too lengthy, please let it be a conversation between two gadflies, delete it or save it as you see fit, and move on. I am simply tired of the hypocrisy. Professors from Harvard don’t have to go all of the way to Jones County, Mississippi to study racism. All they have to do is go down to Harvard Square, get on the red line, switch over to the orange line (or it used to be) and go to Roxbury, Massachusetts, like I did by accident one day in 1979, and discovered a world of poverty so devastating that it is still difficult for me to believe that that poverty exists in a nation so wealthy. Roxbury, Massachusetts had, in those days (and still may have, I do not know) much in common with Jones County, Mississippi.

Thanks, Vikki.

Until next time,

Sherree

How wonderful that you and others founded the Harvest Church in Jasper, Texas. As you know so well from your efforts, much of the most meaningful social change takes place at the grass roots level when folks put their ideals into practice.

Your question, “have we not learned anything from the very history we are so intrigued with?” goes right to the heart of the matter. The authors’ exaggerations and distortions of evidence in State of Jones, followed by Professor Stauffer’s outright false accusations against me, contradict their stated passion for “truth,” while insulting their readers’ intelligence.

By the way, many Collins descendants feel, as you and Greg Rowe do, that the family’s commitment to standing up for their beliefs has been passed along from generation to generation. The Collins’s long history of dissent certainly indicates as much–I think Socrates would designate them gadflies!

Thank you for your comments,
Vikki

So nice to hear from you; the Lyon family is an interesting branch of the Collins family, and makes an appearance in my upcoming book. Most of my information comes from Dorothy Thomas, Donnis Lyon, and Keith Lyon, all descendants of Theodocia Collins and Thomas J. Lyon.

I took notes some years ago from William A. Lyon’s Civil War records. As you already know, he served in the 7th battalion Mississippi Infantry, and died a POW in 1865 at Camp Douglas, Illinois.

According to descendants, the Knight roster, and William A. Lyon’s service records, he never joined the Knight Company. His military record shows him AWOL between Sept. and Oct. 1862 (following the battle of Corinth), but he returned to duty soon after (by Nov. 1862) without a trial, and before the Knight Company was organized. He served at Kennesaw Mountain with the 7th battalion on July 3, 1864, where he was captured and then imprisoned at Camp Douglas. He died there of pneumonia on April 19, 1865.

Confederate military records can be viewed at either the National or state archives. (I purchased my reel from the National Archives.) They are probably posted online, but I have not checked there.

After William’s death, his son, Thomas Jasper Lyon, reportedly became a “surrogate son” to Jasper J. Collins, 1st Sgt. to Newt Knight, and Thomas’s father-in-law.

Hope this has been helpful, and thanks for commenting!

Vikki