Delta-born Author Wright Thompson Remains on NY Times Bestseller List with Riveting Account of Emmett Till Story in “The Barn”
New York Times bestselling author and Southern savant Wright Thompson spent time with us recently to talk about Greenwood, the Delta and his latest book, recently named Time Magazine’s Nonfiction Book of the Year, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi.
With new detail, The Barn depicts the gut-wrenching story of the circumstances behind the murder of Emmett Till – a 14 year-old black boy who at the time in 1955 was visiting relatives in the deeply segregated Mississippi Delta with his family from Chicago – and whose torture and shooting at “the barn” and subsequent tossing into the Tallahatchie River attracted international attention and was a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.
Wright writes a deeply moving and thorough account of all that happened leading up to that day and the immediate aftermath of expunged facts and coordinated malfeasance, but most importantly, the growth that’s transpired from this tragedy.
Wright immersed himself with hours of research over the course of four and a half years to bring this story to light. The book contains documented maps with plots and territories dating back generations, including the thousand-year history of Township 22 North, Range 4 West – the square of land where Till’s murder took place inside the barn.
“Early in the Pandemic, my friend Patrick Weems, from Sumner, asked me if I’d ever been to the barn,” Wright said. “I said, what barn? So, long before this was a magazine article or a book, it became a personal quest to know more about the history of the place I’m from – the Delta. And with each layer of the onion I peeled, instead of learning more, I felt like I knew less. And so, this project turned into a historical mapping of the Delta.”
Wright, who is no stranger to Southern culture, earned his degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri and has written for ESPN since 2006. His 2010 article, “Ghosts of Mississippi,” told the story of the 1962 Ole Miss undefeated football team while concurrent riots took place on campus when the school integrated with James Meredith. He’s had other best sellers with Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams.
Wright grew up in Clarksdale, just 57 miles from Greenwood, and his family’s nearby farm is only 23 miles from “the barn.” He wasn’t sure of his intentions when he started the research, but said it became clear to him as he processed all that he was learning.
“There was never a grand unified theory of anything, I just started writing,” he said. “The place I was going to just sort of revealed itself to me over time. Once that happened, my writing, research, interviews became constant all the time.”
The extensive research depicts Delta landmarks, both current and past, and Wright presents them in unique ways. He mentions a visit to a town like Tutwiler and adds that it is the birthplace of blues legend John Lee Hooker and details how far the town is from the barn. That’s how he describes Delta towns throughout the entire book.
“You can only see the Delta if you see all of it,” he said. “So, it was important to have as wide an aperture as possible. I wanted as much information from as many different places, because the most interesting things about the Delta are when seemingly unrelated histories intersect.”
To Wright, this book became more about teaching his audience the entire history of the Delta and not just the Emmett Till murder, even though that remains the constant subject throughout every chapter.
“I wanted to try to bring the Delta alive for people who might never get a chance to come here,” he said. “I love the Delta. I’ve read everything ever written about the Delta and I feel like many of those works don’t truly reflect that place.”
With something as sensitive as this murder or other historical calamities in Mississippi, the subjects can be deeply challenging to confront and fully understand. But Wright said a light presented itself through his discussions and interviews.
“You would think the light is meeting real life heroes like Willie Williams from Sumner or Sharon Wright in Greenwood,” he said. “But the light was the fact that people are still invested in the idea the Delta has a bright future. Whether it’s Baptist Town in Greenwood or the Spring Initiative in Clarksdale, there are people invested in the rebirth and resurrection. I find that so inspiring.”
But the situation with Emmett Till and learning everything he could about what happened provides the backdrop to this book. Like many others, Wright thought he knew a lot about the story.
“I knew what everybody sort of knows, which as it turns out, is not very much,” he said. “There’s the familiarity of his name and it’s a famous story, but that familiarity is its own kind of erasure, because it is such a code word and shorthand that allows you to not have to deal with what really happened. And I discovered at its core, it’s an unfamiliar story.”
Wright said he found himself uncovering new layers of history at every turn.
“I found myself in the midst of new history over and over and over again,” he said. “I love places where the membrane between the past and the present is so thin that you can see through it. I certainly feel like Greenwood is a place like that.”
He reflected on the day he first stepped into the barn.
“It felt menacing and had a bad, bad vibe,” he said. “It’s as close as America has to Auschwitz. I’ve talked to many people who have been in the barn and that’s a common response.”
As for Greenwood itself, Wright said he loves driving down Money Road and it’s one of his favorite places in the Delta.
“When you drive down Money Road it’s a drive deep into the history of America,” he said. “You’re driving down the Tallahatchie River, where those vile men callously tossed Emmett off the bridge. And on that same road you will drive north to Robert Johnson’s grave at the Little Zion Church. When you’re driving that road, you feel history.”
The book debuted on the New York Times bestseller list and has received critical raves from major media outlets including the Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe and Philadelphia Tribune. Wright started his book tour at Square Books in Oxford and has been on the road ever since.
“I feel like my hair is on fire, but it has been enlightening,” he said. “No matter where I am, people will come up to me and say, ‘I’m from Shaw,’ or ‘I’m from Belzoni’ or ‘I’m from Cleveland’ or ‘I’m from Greenwood.’ So just the degree to which there are Delta expats across the South was something I didn’t fully realize. But we’re everywhere.”
We asked one last question about what the Delta meant to Wright.
“The Delta is home,” he said. “I was born in the Delta and will be buried in the Delta.”
Editor’s note: Greenwood’s Rail Spike Park downtown is home to a larger-than-life, nine-foot bronze statue dedicated to Emmett Till that was unveiled in 2022.
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