The Barn
Wright Thompson’s vast and hyperlocal and unsparingly personal new book, The Barn, is the best thing he’s ever written.
It’s also the reason I started thinking about the building where Emmett Till was murdered, in the first place.
I’d heard about the grocery store in Mississippi: the place where the 14-year-old Till whistled at 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant in 1955. I’d seen the photos — the famously disturbing photos of a disfigured Emmett Till, in an open casket, at his funeral — that his mother explicitly wanted this country to see. And I’d learned how all of this had helped launch America’s civil rights movement.
But we were never taught not the real story, it turns out.
Not even close.
And the reason why is the story of The Barn.
DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:
Genealogically,
Pablo