"An extraordinary new history of Emmett Till, Mississippi and America" -- Washington Post book review

[Ramsey Barner]

“The Barn” is not only an intimate history of the tragedy, but also a deep meditation on Mississippi and America. It revolves around an artifact hiding in plain sight: the barn where Till was beaten and killed.

[....]

“The Barn” is serious history and skillful journalism, but with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought novel.

In Thompson’s telling, layers of the Delta’s history fold upon themselves, mixing the sublime and gruesome. Blood stains its rich alluvial soil. Dockery Plantation, where Charley Patton birthed the blues, lies a few miles down Drew Ruleville Road from Leslie Milam’s barn. Three miles east, the great White quarterback Archie Manning (father of Peyton and Eli) grew up in what he frequently called an idyllic “Mayberry,” never realizing his proximity to the murder.

https://archive.ph/RiANy

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My comments:
This is the best book I've read in a long time. Some of the details in this book are astonishing: Defense attorneys who propped their feet on the trial judge's desk in chambers. Accused murderers let out of jail for the evening to see their families. Mason jars in area stores to raise money for the defendants. A burning cross in front of the inn where the jury was sequestered. Defendants chatting with the judge and drinking water from his pitcher as the jury deliberated.

As Thompson tells the story of Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry passing over the same land that Till and his murderers later crossed, the book begins to read like a William Faulkner novel. When Forrest was exhumed in 2021, he was reburied in a replica uniform. Thompson comments: "This was the last Confederate uniform ever made. Maybe." As Faulkner wrote in 1951, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Here's a previously posted interview with the author: https://www.democraticunderground.com/132131130