South After Emancipation

After watching Free State of Jones, many reoccurring topics as seen in earlier readings came up.  During the movie, there are two different time periods: during the civil war and immediately following and present day in the movie, which took place during the mid 1900s.  During this time in the mid 1900s, Davis Knight is battling a court case to prove that he is white, but he is found to be 1/8 black and by the law of Mississippi unable to marry a white women.  He is the relative of the main character in the movie who had a child with a black woman.  Because of having a relative who is black, Davis Knight is sent to jail for five years for marrying a white woman.  I cannot understand how two free people are unable to be married.  Even fifty years after slavery and gaining freedom, the black population is not able to marry a white person because of segregation laws in Mississippi.  Throughout the movie many common themes appear as seen directly following emancipation.   Among these are lynching, slavery under different names and attempts to deny political representation among the black population. 

A black man is travelling amongst black workers and gathering a census of voters and how many will be voting for the Republican Party.  On his way back from gathering this census, three white men for absolutely zero crime attack him for gathering a census.  They lynched him because of his attempts to exercise his right to vote.  Tactics including lynching and fear were used to dissuade black voters from voting. Somehow, these men are not even tried or accused of the killing.  How can killing a man go unnoticed or ignored?  Similar to the “Southern Horrors” reading, these atrocities of lynching went without punishment. Emancipation in the south was completely ignored. 

Apprenticeships took the place of slavery in the South, particularly Mississippi, and functioned the same way as slavery but used a different name.  Under the law in Mississippi, apprenticeships allowed old slave masters to recapture freed black people under the guise of an apprenticeship.  The captured black population was required to do the same work as previous slaves and treated the same with no pay.  Soon the North sent soldiers to enforce law and abandon apprenticeships during military construction, but these soldiers would only stay for a short period of time and did not do much to enforce these laws.  Why would these soldiers leave knowing that everything would revert back to the old ways after they left?

Lastly, the black population was denied political representation.  The final scene of the movie shows how white Southerners attempted to deny the vote to the black population and those favoring the Republican Party.  As the white Southerners sit with guns outside the election house, they are met with people voting for the Republican Party with guns and willing to give their life to vote.  They allow them to vote, but their votes are not counted and 20+ men only see 2 votes as the democrats in the county won the election 419-2.  This movie            shows the injustices experienced before and after slavery and how the fight to end slavery would not mean the end to unequal treatment and different forms of enslavement.