Irene Boehm, Sports Editor
“It literally changed my outlook on the world.”
- Shonda Rhimes, award-winning producer, screenwriter, author and CEO
Best-selling author Wright Thompson, the epitome of a Renaissance man, will come to Sewanee on March 24 to read from and discuss his latest book, “The Barn, The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi”.
Thompson’s “The Barn”, a New York Times bestseller, examines the enduring and painful legacy of Emmett Till’s 1956 murder in Mississippi.Thanks to Thompson’s generosity and support from Sewanee’s Robeson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation, complimentary copies of the book are available to anyone in the campus community and the greater Sewanee area. Copies can be requested by writing to robersonproject@sewanee.edu or by visiting the Roberson Project’s office in lower Gailor Hall.
A Mississippi native, Thompson is a senior writer at ESPN, an Emmy Award-winning reporter, an executive producer of the television series “TrueSouth” and an author of multiple best-selling books.
In “The Barn”, Thompson confronts the personal toll of the kidnapping, torture and killing of Till, a 14-year-old visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta. Thompson’s narrative examines the miscarriage of justice that allowed Till’s murderers to go unpunished. Although the crime ignited nationwide outrage and helped propel the Civil Rights Movement, it has long been obscured by secrecy and distorted narratives. Thompson’s deeply personal narrative explores the broader forces that shaped the tragedy that unfolded as the cost of that history’s erasure for Till’s family and community as well as Thompson’s own.
“The blood is on the hands of everyone who benefited from the status quo,” Thompson wrote. “One of the things I hope the book does is draw expanding concentric circles of blame around that barn.”
The Washington Post called “The Barn” “extraordinary … an intimate history of the tragedy, but also a deep meditation on Mississippi and America.” Time magazine selected it as one of the 100 “Must Read” books of the year, “a sensitive, deeply reported book that will make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about Till’s lynching and its place in American history.”
Rhimes, showrunner and creator of “Grey’s Anatomy” and executive producer and creative force behind the Netflix hit “Bridgerton”, said Thompson’s work inspired her to donate $1.5 million last year so that the Emmett Till Interpretive Center could purchase the barn where Till was murdered and preserve it as a memorial.
Woody Register (C ’80) director of the Robeson Project and Francis S. Houghteling professor of American history, said Thompson’s visit is timely for the University community.
“Wright Thompson’s book about Emmett Till is especially important for us here at Sewanee, wrestling as it does with how important it is for us to know and remember our history, no matter how painful remembrance is,” Register said. “Forgetting the past, or ‘putting it behind us’is a privilege Black people in this country cannot afford. For these reasons and more, Thompson’s telling of Till’s story is something we at Sewanee need to hear and read.”
Thompson’s appearance in Sewanee is sponsored by the Roberson Project in partnership with the Sewanee School of Letters and The Sewanee Review.