'Haunting . . . The writing is often breathtaking brutality amplified through perfectly
crafted prose.' The Times 'Extraordinary . . . Serious history and skillful journalism but
with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought novel.' Washington Post 'With a passion for
truth and justice and a fierce determination to dig for the secrets Wright Thompson has
produced an incredible history of a crime that changed America.' John Grisham How forces
from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta to bring about the most consequential
murder in US history. Emmett Till's murder is one of the most infamous in American history a
moment that more than any other awakened the world to the racism of the Deep South. Yet
despite growing up just a few miles from where it happened Wright Thompson knew nothing of it
until he left Mississippi. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once and it is ongoing.
Over the course of five years' research Thompson has learnt that almost every part of the
standard account of Till's killing is wrong. In August 1955 after the two men charged with the
murder were acquitted by an all-white jury they gave a false confession to a journalist: one
that was misleading about where the murder took place and who was involved. We now know that at
least eight people were present and many more complicit. And we now know precisely where it
took place: inside a barn on a 36-square-mile grid called Township 22 North Range 4 West.
This book tells the story of that barn. It is the story of what really happened on the night of
August 28 1955 and of the individuals who have spent decades bringing the truth to light. And
it is the story of the centuries-old forces that made that night inevitable: forces that over
the course of 200 years transformed Township 22 North Range 4 West from Choctaw land to a
slave plantation to a sharecropper's farm to the site of the most significant murder in US
history. The result is a revelatory work of investigative reportage and a panoramic new
history of white supremacy in America. It maps the road that the US - and the world - must
travel to heal its oldest deepest wound.
