24th March - Wright Thompson, The Barn

Monday 24th March, 7:30pm

Backstory, 71 Balham High Rd, SW12 9AP

Wright Thompson is comfortably on Tom's list of his all-time top 10 favourite writers. Less known this side of the Pond, he is a phenomenon in the USA, writing for The Atlantic and ESPN and publishing bestselling books on sports and bourbon.

He joins us to discuss The Barn, an extraordinary work of reportage about an horrific racist lynching in his home state of Mississippi. Join us for a fascinating discussion of racism and the fragile state of American politics with a white Mississippian calling for a reckoning with the past.  

We will be serving bourbon cocktails on the night. The ticket-only option does not include a cocktail, but you are welcome to buy one on the night. The book option includes a cocktail. 

About the book:

How forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta to bring about the most consequential murder in US history. Emmett Till’s murder is one of the most infamous in American history; a moment that, more than any other, awakened the world to the racism of the Deep South. Yet despite growing up just a few miles from where it happened, Wright Thompson knew nothing of it until he left Mississippi.

This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing. Over the course of five years’ research, Thompson has learnt that almost every part of the standard account of Till’s killing is wrong. In August 1955, after the two men charged with the murder were acquitted by an all-white jury, they gave a false confession to a journalist: one that was misleading about where the murder took place and who was involved.

We now know that at least eight people were present, and many more complicit. And we now know precisely where it took place: inside a barn on a 36-square-mile grid called Township 22 North, Range 4 West. This book tells the story of that barn.

It is the story of what really happened on the night of August 28, 1955, and of the individuals who have spent decades bringing the truth to light. And it is the story of the centuries-old forces that made that night inevitable: forces that, over the course of 200 years, transformed Township 22 North, Range 4 West from Choctaw land, to a slave plantation, to a sharecropper’s farm, to the site of the most significant murder in US history. The result is a revelatory work of investigative reportage and a panoramic new history of white supremacy in America.

It maps the road that the US – and the world – must travel to heal its oldest, deepest wound.

Tickets Available:

Ticket only - £15

Ticket, book (RRP £25) & bourbon cocktail - £30