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Not for the faint-hearted! A beautifully written investigation into a horrific racist murder in 1950s Mississippi but, far more than that, an author's reckoning with his home state, with America, and with himself. Tom
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.