The Barn
The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
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4.6 • 83 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The instant New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Slate, Vanity Fair, TIME, Buzzfeed, Smithsonian, BookPage, KCUR, Kirkus, and Boston Globe
“It literally changed my outlook on the world…incredible.” —Shonda Rhimes
"The Barn is serious history and skillful journalism, but with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought novel… The Barn describes not just the poison of silence and lies, but also the dignity of courage and truth.” — The Washington Post
“The most brutal, layered, and absolutely beautiful book about Mississippi, and really how the world conspired with the best and worst parts of Mississippi, I will ever read…Reporting and reckoning can get no better, or more important, than this.” —Kiese Laymon
“An incredible history of a crime that changed America.” —John Grisham
"With integrity, and soul, Thompson unearths the terrible how and why, carrying us back and forth through time, deep in Mississippi—baring sweat, soil, and heart all the way through.” —Imani Perry
A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long
Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.
In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation.
Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn, Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The troubled past of Mississippi converges on one tiny plot of land in Wright Thompson’s powerful historical exploration. Centering on the barn where Emmett Till was beaten and murdered, the Mississippi-born journalist takes a broad view of how that kind of violence became possible in his homeland and where it’s gone since. His focus never strays far from the Till tragedy, but the deep racial divide and resultant brutality doesn’t tell the whole story. Human greed forms the common thread, from the first European explorers to the land speculators who shaped Mississippi to the cotton farmers who manipulated soil and slaves to the politicians who still fight to obscure the state’s troubled past. And yet, Thompson finds solace in the spaces between the tragedies—the Delta blues, after all, sprang from the same fertile soil. The Barn confronts a past that should not be forgotten and hopes for a future where good comes from the painful lessons learned.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A forgotten landmark signifies silence and complicity in this sprawling history of the Emmett Till murder. ESPN journalist Thompson (The Cost of These Dreams) revisits the 1955 killing of Till, a 14-year-old Black Chicagoan visiting relatives in Mississippi, for whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Till was dragged from his bed by Bryant's husband, Roy Bryant, her brother-in-law J.W. Milam, and others, who tortured and shot Till and left his body in a river. Bryant and Milam were acquitted at trial and then, protected by double jeopardy laws, confessed to the crime in a self-justifying Look magazine interview. Drawing on his own interviews with eyewitnesses and their relatives, Thompson gives a chilling recap of Till's murder and outlines the firestorm of publicity that made the case a civil rights touchstone, the willful amnesia about the lynching among whites in Mississippi, and the latter-day movement to commemorate the barn where Till died. The narrative also traces multigenerational histories of families associated with the killing as well as the underlying forces—land values and cotton prices—that ruled their harshly exploitative society. Throughout, Thompson combines meticulous historical sleuthing with dense atmospherics ("The darkness of rural Mississippi remains a physical thing, heavy and alive.... There is no safety outside the civilization of headlights"). It's a vivid recreation of a shocking crime.
Customer Reviews
The barn
Read it! You will not regret it.
Truly amazing!
“The Barn” is an amazing story that connects Mississippi to its history of prosperity and violence, as well as the crossroads of music. The story of Emmett Till is truly horrific, and his death created a ripple that launched folks into the civil rights movement to the point where he has become a symbol of how to take care of each other as well as their memory. This book showed me that Emmett Till is alive and everywhere in our society.
Well Done.
I expected to read an account of Emmett till’s murder. Instead I received a detailed history of America through the eyes of the Mississippi Delta. Thoroughly researched, deeply personal, and achingly emotional, this is the best book I have read in some time.