The barn The secret history of a murder in Mississippi

Renowned sportswriter Thompson's Mississippi family farm is 23 miles from the barn in which young Emmett Till was tortured and killed in 1955, yet so diabolical was the cover-up he didn't learn anything about the lynching that helped spur the civil rights movement until he went away to college. Little has changed; historical markers recently erected to mark "places associated with Till's murder" were stolen or riddled with bullet holes. Determined to bring the full truth to light, Thompson begins his excavation with the lay of the land and continues with the forcing off of the Choctaws, the harsh legacies of slavery and sharecropping, and the rise of the KKK. Thompson chronicles every aspect of Till's family, brief life, murder, and the corrupt trial that followed, including the heroism of the 18-year-old witness, Willie Reed, whom Medgar Evers helped smuggle out of the state after his testimony. As he intimately describes the Delta's fields, decaying towns, entangled families, poverty, hopelessness, resentment, secrets, sorrows, and grit, Thompson also tells tales of Delta blues musicians and honors the valor of Delta civil rights activists past and present. Carefully weighing each word as though it's being set on the scales of justice, Thompson presents a deeply felt and vitally written history of conscience with infinite consequence.