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Wright Thompson is one of the best sports writers in America. He also doesn’t stick to sports. While he’s best known for his work with ESPN, he has a new book about one of the most horrific moments in the history of his home state. The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi is about the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955. The killing of Till became a national news story that sparked the Civil Rights movement . Thompson’s book adds additional context to a homicide that occurred just 23 miles from the Thompson family farm.

We recently caught up with Thompson to ask him about tackling this subject. Thompson is a bestselling author whose previous works include Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams . The Barn is available for purchase at several retailers and Penguin Random House .

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Awful Announcing: Why write a book about Emmett Till?

Wright Thompson: “During the pandemic, I was working on an ESPN story. I was doing the family trees and the family histories of every member of the Los Angeles Lakers. Avery Bradley’s family is from Mound Bayou, Mississippi. That is close to where I grew up. I started researching Mound Bayou and Bradley and realized that one of the witnesses in the Emmett Till murder trial was a woman named Amanda Bradley . So, I started trying to figure out if they were related. They’re not. But in the process, I ended up on the phone with Patrick Weems at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center . He said, ‘Have you ever been to the barn?’ And I said, ‘What barn?’ So, I just got completely obsessed. I started researching it in my spare time.”

Why were you looking up the family trees of members of the Lakers?

“I was trying to think of a different way to write about a team. And so I was going to write about the deep history of every one of them, and how they all arrived here. The idea that everybody stands on somebody else’s shoulders.”

What ultimately convinced you to write a book?

“I’ve been doing it for a while with no assignment. It was something that I was going to do no matter what. It turned very quickly into a history of the Mississippi Delta, Mississippi, and then the United States. It was a personal obsession that turned into an Atlantic story . My book editor read that story and was like, ‘You need to write a book.’ And we were off.”

What would you consider the most fascinating detail in ‘The Barn?’

“I think it’s the laying together of timelines of the 1955 Mississippi governor’s election. All through that summer with just the crazy political rhetoric. That these five people running for governor were saying incredibly rhetorically violent stuff. The whole race was about Brown v. Board and school integration. It was a race to the bottom over who could say the most rhetorically violent stuff. That election was on a Tuesday. Less than 24 hours later, Emmett Till, his cousins, and friends went to the store. I just didn’t realize the hyper-close connection between this famous murder and the political rhetoric.”

Could you elaborate on this connection?

“The political rhetoric, especially in Mississippi, has always been directly linked to violence. The governor’s election happened on a Tuesday, and Emmett Till whistled (at Carolyn Bryant) at Bryant’s Grocery on a Wednesday. John F. Kennedy gave his famous civil rights speech . The next day Medgar Evers got shot . There has always been a very close link, especially in Mississippi, between politics and violence.”

Was your motivation to provide more insights into who Till was and the circumstances around his death?

“I think people will be writing about this story for a hundred years. When you’re working on it, you certainly feel like a piece of a bigger machine. All the people I interacted with who had already done work here were very helpful and collegial because I think everybody understands that the story doesn’t belong to anyone. You do right by it, then move on and let somebody else come along and move the ball down the field a little more. If you’re going to carry around the name Emmett Till, which is a sacred name in many corners, that name is like nitroglycerin. You better be very, very careful with it and respectful with it. That was always at the very front of my mind.”

How much did you know about the story before writing about it?

“I knew the bare minimum. I knew what I learned in my modern Southern history class in college. The book reveals that I didn’t really know anything at all, Most people don’t understand what happened in that barn and why. Emmett Till was killed by three brothers and a brother-in-law, sure.

“I think a lot of people watch the news and wonder ‘How did we get here?’ The answer to that question I think also lies in the history of the barn and the land around it.”

As a Mississippi native, how do you feel about the preconceived notions of Mississippi based on Mississippi Burning, Ghosts of Mississippi, and Till’s murder?

“We earned Mississippi Burning . That movie is true. The reporter who uncovered all those stories is a good friend of mine named Jerry Mitchell who’s still in Jackson, breaking stories. He has covered the Emmett Till murder extensively. I think it would be in incredibly poor taste for a Mississippian to complain about any of those depictions because of the violence and trauma suffered by people. I don’t feel like anybody has any room to complain.”

Is there a lingering question about the Till murder that you weren’t able to answer?

“I don’t know exactly how many people were at the barn involved in the murder. I don’t think anyone will ever know. Keith Beauchamp is a filmmaker. I think he said there were 14. I can’t get there. I can get to eight. There are things that I don’t know. There are things we’ll never know.”

What’s one takeaway you hope people get from ‘The Barn?’

“It’s a book about a horrific thing, but there are heroes at the core of it who were fighting to preserve this memory: Rev. Wheeler Parker and Gloria Dickerson . Those heroes give me hope about humanity, about the American experiment, about all of it. I hope people are horrified but also inspired.”

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