The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Willson Center of Humanities and Arts, and Avid Bookshop will a host a night with author Wright Thompson at the historic Morton Theatre.
This gathering, scheduled for Tuesday, October 1 at 7:00 p.m., will celebrate the release of his new book "The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi."
Wright Thompson will be in conversation with Dr. Charles N. Davis, the Dean of Grady College.
Purchase tickets for this upcoming event.
You must purchase an EVENT ENTRY BUNDLE for entry to the event. Event Entry Bundles include one copy of The Barn. All entrants to the event must purchase event entry. You may purchase additional copies of The Barn for event pickup by adding more copies of the book to your cart. If you have any questions, please contact events@avidbookshop.com.
For accessibility requests, contact events@avidbookshop.com. Please submit your request at least two weeks before the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.
In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. Wright Thompson reveals, that at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation.
Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, money, power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn, Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN and the bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.
ABOUT THE IN-CONVERSATION PARTNER:
Charles N. Davis is the Dean of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. He was appointed in 2013, after a long career in journalism. Wright Thompson was one of Dr. Davis’ students when he taught at the University of Missouri.
PRAISE FOR THE BARN: THE SECRET HISTORY OF A MURDER IN MISSISSIPPI:
“The Barn is the most brutal, layered and absolutely beautiful book about Mississippi, and really how the world conspired with the best and worst parts of Mississippi, I will ever read. In Mississippi, we talk about athletes who bust their ass, skills be damned. Well, every generation you get a few writers with the engine of a 747 and the skill of a wizard. We see it in Ward, Wright, Faulkner and Trethewey. And that finely crafted motor is on full display in this work by Wright Thompson. The Barn is the new standard in research and book-making. There is one Wright Thompson. And we are so lucky he loves Mississippi. Reporting and reckoning can get no better, or more important, than this. Mississippi, goddamn.”
—Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division and Heavy: An American Memoir
“The secrets of what happened in The Barn in 1955 when a boy named Emmett Till was murdered have been buried for decades. The killers were never brought to justice and their allies covered up for them. With a passion for truth and justice, and a fierce determination to dig for the secrets, Wright Thompson has produced an incredible history of a crime that changed America.”
—John Grisham, #1 New York Times-bestselling author
“In this important, diligently researched, and beautifully rendered story, Wright Thompson takes up one of the most consequential and tragic events of the twentieth century, the murder of Emmett Till, in the place where it happened. The land, the people, and circumstance are vivid on every page. With integrity, and soul, Thompson unearths the terrible how and why, carrying us back and forth through time, deep in Mississippi—baring sweat, soil, and heart all the way through. Most of all, Thompson teaches us that history is the most important ghost story there is to tell, and that we—the haunted—must be healed.”
—Imani Perry, National Book Award winning-author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Event Location
Morton Theatre
195 W Washington St.
Athens, GA 30601-2752
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