The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, child death, and racism.

Emmett Till’s brutal murder was an example of systematic racial violence and oppression in the Mississippi Delta. Its timing in the summer of 1955 coincided with a frenzy of racial animosity and resistance to granting Black Americans civil rights in the form of integrated schools and voting. In emphasizing the wider historical and social context of the region, Thompson argues that Till’s murder was not an anomaly committed by a few “bad apples”—instead, it was a reflection of an entire system that oppressed and persecuted Black Americans. 

Following the Civil War, there was a brief period during which Black Americans held elected offices in Mississippi. However, the KKK became active in the 1870s, with its first grand wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, hailing from the Mississippi Delta. Formed by former Confederate officers, this terrorist organization used violence to suppress Black voting and force Black Americans into subservient economic roles or sharecropping. In 1890, Jim Crow was written into the Mississippi constitution, which created segregation by law. Strict codes of behavior for Black Americans followed, especially concerning how Black men acted around white women.