Wright Thompson in Conversation with Condace Pressley

Please join us for a conversation with author Wright Thompson, guided by Condace Pressly and co-presented with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Woodruff Auditorium is located inside McElreath Hall. Doors will open at 6:30 PM.

Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing. 

In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation.

Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn, Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.

About the Author

Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN and the bestselling author of Pappyland and The Cost of These Dreams. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.

About the Moderator

Condace Pressley is an award-winning journalist, morning personality and 2016 inductee into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame. Many in Atlanta are familiar with her voice as reporter/anchor on KISS 104.1 and on News 95.5 and AM750 WSB. She is the producer and host of the Sunday public affairs program ‘Perspectives.’ A 2016 graduate of Leadership Atlanta, Condace is a distinguished University of Georgia alumna joining the Centennial Class of Fellows of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2015. The HistoryMakers, the world’s largest African American oral video history archive profiled Pressley in 2014 for her significant contributions to media. Condace is a former President of both the National and Atlanta Association of Black Journalists and was Atlanta’s 2012 Pioneer Black Journalist. Condace is active in the community having served on the boards of Girls, Inc., The Georgia Ballet, The YWCA of NW Georgia, Hosea Helps where she served as board chair and she continues to volunteer with Leadership Atlanta. Condace enjoys mentoring and has passion for the arts and travel.

The event is presented in partnership with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

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