It’s a long way from Hollywood, yet a swampy corner of southeast Mississippi has given the film world its latest hero — or maybe antihero.
His name is Newton Knight, born 180 years ago and played by Matthew McConaughey in the “The Free State of Jones,” which opened around the country on Friday (June 24).
The movie tells the true (okay, true-ish) story of Knight and a small band of farmers and slaves who successfully fought their fellow Civil War-era Confederates to declare Jones County, Miss., loyal to the United States — and free of slavery.
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