History

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This incredible book connects hundreds of dots, centering the murder of Emmett Till in a stream of events, characters and circumstances going all the way back into prehistory. Wright Thompson grew up in the same Mississippi township as Till’s relatives and Till’s murderers, and he is quick to point out how all the local families, white and black alike, have been connected throughout history. Thompson approaches his topic with the eye of an insider while bringing in all the research one would expect of a journalist. One of his central themes is that the tragedy didn’t have to go down like it did—there were inflection points throughout history that could have sent events in a different direction altogether. Thompson does a masterful job of showing how, one social and economic event at a time, the Mississippi Delta came to be ruled by an insular bunch of poor, desperate, white terrorists, who by their actions destroyed the very place and way of life that they were trying so hard to cling to. The tragedy and the irony that are the hallmarks of the Delta’s history drip from every page. Till’s murder, in Thompson’s you-are-there retelling, wasn’t the result of an incident in a store, but rather a product of a cascade of events and circumstances that left Mississippi with a powerless but violence-prone white population who were desperate to subjugate their Black neighbors as a means of making sure they themselves weren’t at the bottom of the social order. I’m in awe of this book. Vivid storytelling, thorough research and interviews, beautiful prose, insights and turns of phrase that I wanted to share with whoever was nearby—a must-read.

The Barn by Wright Thompson, (List Price: $35, Penguin Press, 9780593299821, September 2024)

Reviewed by Amanda Grell, Pearl’s Books in Winston-Salem, Arkansas