60 pages • 2 hours read
Wright ThompsonThe Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Barn”
Part 1, Pages 1-35 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, child death, and racism.
On August 28, 1955, Willie Reed was 18 years old. While many Black Americans had already left the Mississippi Delta, Reed and his family were working the cotton-picking season for Clint Shurden. In the dying days of this way of life, there were many abandoned shacks near Reed’s home. Reed heard a pickup truck approach and saw four white men in the cab and three Black men with a “terrified Black child” (6), Emmett Till. Reed was in the Delta town of Drew on land owned by Leslie Milam, a mean individual whom Black Americans loathed. In two hours, Till would be murdered.
The Barn’s author, Wright Thompson, was born and raised in the Delta town of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Thompson, who is white, had never heard the story about Till until he went to college out of state. The barn where Till was murdered remained but was pushed out of the white collective memory. Thompson notes that the Delta is man-made and that its defining idea is overlap. In the 21st century, Patrick Weems runs the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Mississippi. It is his job to make sure that people remember Till’s murder.
It was in the Delta town of Money, Mississippi, where Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Three days later, Till was kidnapped and murdered. Thompson argues that “the way Till exists in the firmament of American history stands in startling opposition to the gaps in what we know about his killing” (10). For example, it is unclear how many men were involved in the killing. Thompson believes that it was eight, all of whom got away with murder. To Thompson, the details are critical. Seeking to go beyond the known, Thompson explores the unknown in a killing that “illuminates the true history” of the US (11). The cover-up of the killing was a collaboration involving many. He notes that it is important to expose the crime because hate strengthens when hidden.
Reed, along with Frank Young, hid between the barn and the road as they heard the cries of Till. At one point, J. W. Milam, one of the killers, came out to pump at a well. Reed witnessed the white men pull their truck into the barn and exit with the body of Till covered by a tarp. Till had a broken skull, wrist bones, and femur, injuries consistent with a pistol-whipping. The blood on the floor was covered with cotton seed.
Till had come to Mississippi from Illinois in 1955 to stay with his great-uncle Moses Wright and his cousin Simeon Wright. When Till whistled at Carolyn, Simeon was horrified and feared the consequences. Sharing a bed with Till, Simeon woke up to J.W. holding a pistol. Moses and J.W.’s half-brother Roy Bryant were there as well. Simeon’s mother begged for Till’s life to no avail. Soon after the murder, she, Simeon, and Moses moved to Chicago.
Simeon later got involved with Weems to keep Till’s memory alive. He returned many times to the spot where Till whistled. The signs to honor Till at the river where his body was found were shot or stolen. Finally, a bullet-proof sign was placed in honor of him. White nationalists then gathered at the spot of the sign to make a recruiting video in the 21st century. Till’s best friend, Wheeler Parker, Jr., is the only person officially designated by the family to speak on their behalf. Mamie Till-Mobley, Till’s mother, requested that he keep her son’s memory alive. Parker later became a minister in Illinois.
Immediately after the murder, Young went to Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a civil rights leader and “prominent Black businessman” (23). After Howard heard what happened from Young, he contacted a trusted white reporter and arranged a meeting with sheriffs. The Black men who had been taken with Till had already been arrested under false names and hidden away. Young disappeared soon thereafter, never to be seen again. Initially, Sheriff George Smith attempted to do justice and arrested J.W. and Roy. However, the racist Sheriff Henry Strider took the case over. Black journalists helped search for witnesses and tried to convince people to testify.
Amanda Bradley and Reed agreed to testify. Bradley lived in a sharecropper house 100 yards from the barn and worked for Leslie Milam. Reed stopped at her house during the two hours that Till was being tortured. Clint Shurden supported Reed and drove him to the courthouse to testify. At the trial, Mamie was subjected to a cruel interrogation, with defense counsel suggesting that she had hidden her son to claim insurance money. Reed told the truth while J.W. stared at him.
In the 2010s, Jeff Andrews, a dentist, owned the barn where Till was murdered. He was the fourth owner since Leslie. Standing in the barn with him, Thompson saw dirt where Till had been murdered and some Christmas decorations in a corner. Andrews did not know the barn’s history until after he bought the property. He never looked into the past and claimed that 95% of school children in the Delta did not know who Till was. Thompson says that the story has been repressed and that in its place is bitterness and a sense of white victimhood.
Part 1, Pages 35-74 Summary
When Leslie Milam moved in late 1955, Stafford Shurden purchased the property with the barn. He did not know that Till was killed in his hometown or that one of the key witnesses, Willie Reed, worked for his relative. The event was not spoken about. White locals learned only a sanitized version of the history of Drew and the Delta: “Black history exists only in memory, and a shrinking number of memories at that” (37). Thompson highlights Carl Watson, a Black custodian born just four years after the murder, who did not learn about the murder in the barn until the 1980s.
Thompson draws upon the history of the Delta as context for the murder. He argues that there was an inherent tension between Thomas Jefferson’s desire for a land of yeomen farmers and the price attached to land. This tension between capitalist investors and small farmers played out favorably and brutally for capitalist investors in Drew. The barn is located on what was the southwest quarter of Section 2, Township 22 North, Range 4 West on one of the early maps. This 36-square-mile piece of property saw the birth of blues music, the struggle of Fannie Lou Hamer to vote, a founding family of the KKK, and the murder of Till.
After Reed testified to a jury in Sumner, Mississippi, which acquitted those accused of the murder, he had to flee for his safety. He had only one plausible route, which skirted the Dockery Farm and was populated with poor Black families. Once out of town, Medgar Evers drove Reed to safety. While Reed was in Chicago, the racist Senator Eastland of Mississippi sent Reed a message. It was not lost on Reed that he could be reached. Despite experiencing a mental health episode due to the stress, Reed returned to Mississippi to testify before a grand jury, which declined to bring charges. Reed returned to Chicago and changed his name to Willie Louis.
Thompson exposes the events surrounding the original township. The Marlow family cemetery is located on the township’s line. Dee Marlow fired Hamer for trying to register to vote and kicked her off the plantation. In the northeast corner of the town is the Drew-Merigold Road, which runs through the Sunflower Plantation. Hamer sometimes worked there next to Mae Bertha Carter, who lived on the northwest corner. Carter and her husband sent their children to the all-white Drew High School. Thomas Pemble, the plantation boss, sent someone to their home demanding that they withdraw their children from that school. They refused. As a result, their house was shot at, their livestock was stolen, and they were thrown off the plantation.
One of the Carters’ children was Gloria Dickerson. After receiving a good education, she returned to Drew and now runs several non-profits. One of those programs is a school called Emmett Till Academy. She told Thompson that Drew cannot be transformed until there is an understanding that Till’s murder happened there. It is essential to examine the present to find what remains of the past, as the potential for violence is still there.
In 2002, Willie Louis was approached by a filmmaker in Chicago. He was taken to Mamie Till’s house, where he embraced Wheeler Parker and Simeon Wright. The next year, the FBI came to Louis and asked him to return to Mississippi to help in the re-investigation of Till’s murder. Once there, Louis was astounded that everything had changed except the barn.
Approximately 12 years later, activists brought the Till family to the barn on the anniversary of the murder. A police escort accompanied them. However, in a show of disrespect, people started shooting nearby. Thompson discovered that J. W. Milam’s gun, which killed Till, still exists. It is privately owned and is stored in a safety deposit box in Mississippi.
Clint Shurden’s son, Sidney, reported to Thompson that his family was regarded as the black sheep of their clan. It is most likely that they were so treated because Clint had supported Louis. Louis died in 2013. His wife noted that he had terrible nightmares after he returned to the site of the barn with the FBI and that he never stopped missing his home.
Thompson visited Argo, Illinois, where Parker pointed to places where he had played with Till as children. Simeon died in 2017, but his wife continues the work to keep Till’s memory alive. Thompson emphasizes that although Till’s murder had national implications, it happened to a real family who still grieves. The friends and family of Till still push for a national monument in Chicago and Mississippi.
Part 1 Analysis
Given the significance of Till’s murder in American history, Thompson points out that it is significant that there is still so much that remains unknown about it, including the number and identity of all the perpetrators. The unknown details result from the deliberate cover-up of the crime, which involved collaboration among many people. For decades, the crime was not discussed in the South. Those who grew up near the scene of the crime did not learn of its existence. The code of silence around this murder is indicative of The System of Racial Violence and Oppression in the Mississippi Delta, which continues to enable racial discrimination to flourish by suppressing Black American history. Thompson wants to bring this crime into the light and place it in the context of a history of corruption and economic exploitation in the Mississippi Delta (See: Background).
The scene of the murder, the barn in Drew, was likewise ignored by many locals, while others remained entirely unaware of the barn’s history. The details of the crime were provided by two of the perpetrators in an interview with a magazine. They lied about the sequence of events: They omitted the location of the killing because it would implicate their relation, Leslie Milam, who owned the barn. The author and others who lived in the area would therefore pass the barn without knowledge of what had happened there. When the land was sold, the new owner did not know the barn’s history at the time of purchase, only discovering it later on. As a result, the owners treated the barn as a shed, like any other. The town of Drew disassociated itself from the crime entirely.
Thompson also emphasizes the links between past and present, pointing to how racist attitudes still impact the community. While the deliberate suppression of the memory of the crime is one such example of continuing racist attitudes, another example is how some members of the community have responded to attempts to acknowledge and honor Till. Thompson explains that multiple signs set up to honor Till’s memory were shot at and vandalized, while members of Till’s family endured disrespectful and provocative behavior from locals when they visited the barn decades later. The tensions surrounding Till's legacy speak to a community that is still unable and unwilling to confront its past and the dangers of racism. The open disrespect shown by white supremacists toward Till’s memorial sign reveals how white supremacy and racial hatred are still a live and present danger in the South in the 21st century.
In painting the picture of life in Mississippi for Black Americans in 1955, Thompson draws attention to daily terrors, which highlights The Courage of Resistance evident in those who stood up against this racist system. In choosing to testify, Willie Reed put his own life on the line and ultimately had to flee the state for his own safety, undergoing a change of identity. Thompson also introduces the courageous actions of Till’s family and allies, both in their fight for justice at the time of the murder and in their continuing attempts to honor Till’s legacy.
Thompson also exposes The Intersection of Personal and Collective History. He traces the family trees of several people who were victims, perpetrators, witnesses, or adjudicators of the crime. Emphasizing the connections among the white locals in the case, he depicts the crime and cover-up as the act of one “tribe” killing the child of another. While this language of different “tribes” is problematic and potentially offensive, Thompson’s terminology reflects how the racially segregated South under Jim Crow treated Black Americans and white Americans as two separate, distinct groups instead of acknowledging them as equal citizens.
