Did you watch Free State of Jones?

I did, and forgot I only talked about it on FB. My overall take on it was:

Well, the Free State of Jones was really slow, but I’m willing to forgive much because it’s a rare film indeed that actually depicts Reconstruction the way it happened.

It’s not the best movie ever – I think the pacing was very slow, and I would have cut the 1950s framing device – but it shows the Black Codes being used to re-enslave black children after emancipation, it shows freedmen and white unionists working together to organize Union League rallies and marches and meetings, freedmen agitating for 40 acres and a mule, voter registration efforts being met with violence, and it shows klan members wearing their old Confederate uniforms using terrorism to punish black political activity. 

This narrative of the Civil War and Reconstruction – a far more historically accurate one than the “moonlight and magnolias” vision of Gone With The Wind – is almost never shown in American cinema or television, so it was really surprising and encouraging to see it on the big screen.