The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi

by Wright Thompson

They all agreed on the following set of facts, as laid out by the defense: Emmett Till had been hidden by the NAACP in the North, in either Chicago or Detroit, and Willie Reed and Moses Wright had been coached by professional, probably communist agitators, and Mamie Till had played along with the plot in exchange for a life insurance payout for her not-dead son, and she’d flown down and lied about recognizing her son, lied about her tears and emotion, and all of this had been arranged by shadowy powers who wanted to overthrow the southern way of life as a precursor to an attack on the United States itself. The body pulled from the Tallahatchie River had been donated to the cause by a helpful mortician. These people had access to bodies, the defense attorneys had said. They would stop at nothing to attack Mississippi.