The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi

In summer 1955, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were charged with the torture and murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. They were acquitted, and a false confession obscured the truth for decades. Wright Thompson's account reveals the true nature and location of the crime: inside the barn of one of the killers, in Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half—a six-square-mile grid in the Mississippi Delta, twenty-three miles from Thompson's own family farm. Thompson draws on his deep local knowledge of the families involved, the historical forces that converged to bring them together, and how the crime became central to American history. By placing the killing floor on the map of the Delta and the nation, Thompson traces the path the country must take to address its oldest, deepest wound.