Six Bridges Book Festival

Wright Thompson

PRESENTER: Wright Thompson
BOOK: The Barn
MODERATOR: Karama Neal

About the author:

Widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading sports journalists, Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN, an Emmy Award-winning reporter, and the executive producer of the TV show TrueSouth. He is the author of several bestselling books including Pappyland, about the storied whiskey distillery. A Mississippi native, Thompson is at heart a Southern storyteller who believes that understanding the place where one lives is both an obligation and an act of love. By exploring foodways, beliefs, identities, and histories—both remembered and forgotten—he seeks to reveal the truths of the region he calls home.

About the book:

The Barn reckons with the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, the failure to bring his slayers to justice, and the global forces that caused the tragedy to play out the way it did. While the event stoked national outrage and catalyzed the civil rights movement, it has also been shrouded in secrecy and misinformation. Over the years, this brutal history has largely disappeared from the public consciousness, particularly in Mississippi Delta communities surrounding the site of the lynching. Thompson himself—whose family farm was located just 23 miles from the barn where Till died—only learned about it after he left the state for college.

Sponsored by Panacea Financial with additional support from the CALS Distinguished Lecture Fund in honor of Maurice Smith