Contact: Meg Henderson
Photo by: submitted
STARKVILLE, Miss.--During a March 18 public program at Mississippi State, historian Victoria Bynum will provide an in-depth look at the legendary rebellion-within-a-rebellion that took place in Civil War-era Jones County.
Bynum is this year's featured guest for the university's 2015 John F. and Jeanne A. Marszalek Lecture to begin at 2 p.m. in Mitchell Memorial Library's Charles H. Templeton Sr. Music Museum. "The Free State of Jones: Community, Race and Kinship in Civil War Mississippi" is the title of her address.
A Distinguished Professor Emerita of History at Texas State University, San Marcos, she is a descendent of several families on both sides of the famous "Free State" uprising.
A film adaption of her 2001 book, "The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War," currently is under production in Louisiana. Written by Gary Ross, the film stars Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey as Newton "Newt" Knight, the Confederate soldier who became disillusioned with the war and rallied other deserters to create a safe haven from mandatory military service.
This year's Marszalek Lecture program also will feature an address by history doctoral student Gracjan A. Kraszewski of Starkville, winner of the 2015 Marszalek Graduate Student Award. A 2012 MSU master's degree graduate in history, he will read his award-winning essay, "Entangled Allegiance: Catholics in the Civil War South."
Bynum is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, who taught for 24 years at TSU before retiring in 2010. Her research has explored the role of class and kinship in creating Unionist communities in the Confederate South, as well as gender, race and class relations in the Old and New South.
Her other books include "The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and its Legacies" (2010) and "Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South" (1992).
Bynum currently moderates Renegade South, a blog exploring the lives of unconventional Southerners. For more, see https://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/.
MSU's John F. and Jeanne A. Marszalek Library Fund and Lecture Series was established in 2002 by the Marszaleks and MSU Libraries to encourage use of primary source materials related to American history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jacksonian America, and race relations. The library fund supports Mitchell Memorial's acquisition of additional primary-source materials.
Each spring semester, the lecture series features a nationally recognized historian, along with the presentation of a research paper by a top university student scholar.
For more information on MSU Libraries, the Marszalek Lecture Series and the March 18 program, visit http://library.msstate.edu/marszalek.
MSU is Mississippi's flagship research university, available online at www.msstate.edu, facebook.com/msstate, instagram.com/msstate and twitter.com/msstate.