Inside the acknowledgments: The making of Wright Thompson’s ‘The Barn’

The title and subtitle of Wright Thompson’s "The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi" lay down a marker of its audacity. It’s a work of true crime that, in fact, is a story of land, of global commerce and capitalism, of the Delta blues. Of course, one of the most infamous murders in American history — the lynching of a 14-year-old Black child, Emmett Till — looms over the book. It’s an event of overwhelming notoriety and tectonic consequence.

Bluntly, "The Barn," which sprang out of a story, “His Name Was Emmett Till,” published in The Atlantic in 2021, is the best nonfiction I’ve read in years — maybe ever. And as a writer myself, I am naturally jealous, but also curious. How did Thompson do it? The endnotes of a work of nonfiction provide something of a roadmap: a chronicle of archives, newspapers, and interviewees. But there’s another, less scrutinized repository of clues to a book’s assembly, one decidedly more opaque: acknowledgments.

That is where one encounters the beating heart of the book’s journey to publication. For Thompson, that journey was writing in the Smoky Mountains, on a trip to Dollywood, on Christmas morning. “It just was a constant thing,” he recalled. “I'm just grateful to a lot of people who were patient at dinners while I talked.”

Acknowledgments are a unique window on the writing process. Thompson walked me through who made the cut and why.

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Dickerson is one of the central characters in the book. In 1965, at age 12, she integrated the all-white schools of Drew, Mississippi, where Till was murdered.

In some ways, she is the heartbeat of this thing. Gloria said to me at some point, It's important that people understand the history of this one building, because it explains why the Delta is like it is. And to me, that emerging up from the community of Drew felt like, Oh, this is not a history lesson. This is a book that all exists in present tense, regardless of the date on it. I felt like that was just essential. 

Reed was 18 when, from his vantage outside the barn, he heard Till being tortured.

I spent a lot of time with her. She was just grateful somebody was asking about Willie, what he carried with him when he left, and this idea that he chose to do the right thing and paid for it in his sleep. He had nightmares. She had front-row seats to what it cost.

Rev. Parker was with Till, his cousin, the night he was taken away to be murdered.

Wheeler is the greatest American I've ever met, and has made me rethink my deep skepticism of the idea of God — because I can't explain in any other way how he could, throughout his life, greet hate with love and fear with openness. I got to know Wheeler while I was reporting the book. The first iteration in my head was the story of the murder, the history of the land, and the story of the murder. The fourth act emerged as I was doing it. I came to realize that these people I'm talking to about 1955, their current experience with this — and fighting for the memory over the forces of erasure — is the project. In some ways, without Wheeler and Marvel’s lives, the whole thing is intellectual. Their daily fight for this is what keeps it from ever feeling like a history lesson. You know, writing the book is just the tax I pay to get to know them.

Annie is the widow of Simeon Wright, who was sharing a bed with Till when he was abducted.

It's not in the book, because it just felt like a personal moment, but my favorite day of reporting is when I went up to Chicago because Annie Wright told me that I hadn't had a good southern lunch till I’d had hers. They did the whole thing — hog maw and chicken and pork chops. I brought a Sock It to Me cake, which is a real Mississippi thing. Wheeler and Marvel came over, and they just sat around and told stories with Annie and her sister, and it was really beautiful. Annie carries, proudly and militantly, the memory of her husband, who was in the bed with Emmett Till the night he was kidnaped. She is the living carrier of those memories. All of them remain Mississippians in exile, and the deep connections I had to people whom I didn't have anything in common [with] offered the hope that there is some tribe of us out there that could exist. I don't think that's something I fully realized until I knew them really well. Annie’s one of those people who reminds you that time isn't real.

Author, "Remembering Emmett Till"

I have always thought that the history of the Delta could only be told stripped from the tyranny of time. It always felt to me like a place where the membrane between past and present was really, really thin. Dave Tell’s book really crystallized for me that any history of the murder of Emmett Till must also simultaneously be a history of the memory of Emmett Till. I listed him in the acknowledgments because that book really sharpened how I was thinking about it. I'm not sure I would have been as clear-eyed.

Author, "Empire of Cotton"

"Empire of Cotton" is the work of a madman genius. I had to get a new copy because I wore it out. Reading about the scope and scale of the global commodity chain — that was when I first realized that cotton was oil, and that meant Mississippi was Saudi Arabia. And it just allowed me to see that any history of the American caste system that stops at the water's edge, and doesn't deal with this as the inevitable child of capitalism and the need for returns on investment, was fatally flawed. When you stop at the water's edge and say any of this is an American problem, you have ended your ability to go to the well. Like, you've got to get to Manchester, Lancashire, and the first textile mills to understand why this violence happened, where it happened.

Researcher

I'm terrified that somebody's gonna come steal her. No, I'm joking. But there wouldn't be a book without Katie. I'd been doing research, not even knowing what it was going to be. And I'd read — I'm making this up — 50 books and done 100 interviews or 200. And I had a hard drive with all of this stuff on it. I got her to come to Mississippi. I drove her through the book over three or four days. We did the square of land, all of it. I basically said, I'm going to give you this hard drive, and I need you to help me come up with an organizational system. She essentially invented a bespoke Dewey Decimal System that allowed her to do an unbelievably invasive fact check at the end. Because if there was something wrong, the whole project would fall apart. The other thing she did was enable me to be really aggressive and complete and transparent with endnotes. It was important to me to show my work and say, This is where all this came from. I am not the first person to write about this murder or this region. I will not be the last person. I am hyper-aware that I exist in a continuum of people, and it is very important to me for whoever comes along next to easily and efficiently be able to strip my thing for parts.

Drummer, The Grateful Dead

I wouldn't have had the courage or stubbornness to do the thing I wanted to do if I hadn't watched him in his own sort of creative stubbornness and confidence. His ability to, on one hand, interact with the world in an incredibly commercial way, but also believe that the main thing is the main thing. And he's so protective of his creative process. He just authentically doesn't give a fuck. Like, that was really inspiring. It was a map about how to have a creative life. This is a guy who has so much money you can't even imagine it, and he is in that studio six days a week, 9:30 to 5:30 p.m. every day, making music — the vast majority of which will never be heard until after he's gone, if it's heard at all. It was a reminder that the making of it is the joy, that everything else is sort of bullshit.

Author, "Emmett Till"

Devery wrote a book that is also the work of a madman. If you have a question about a timeline — I mean, honestly, there were very few rabbit holes he didn't reach the bottom of. I just had a ton of respect for his reporting and diligence and obsession. Like, nobody thinks this is their story. Everybody understands that they are, however briefly, a steward of it. If you're going to have Emmett Till’s name in your mouth, you better have some purity of heart.

Friends

They are dear friends of mine. Early in this process, before I'd even gotten up with Katie, I had all of these ideas swirling. When I read that Nathan Bedford Forrest had marched his cavalry down the Dougherty Bayou, I started to see this square of land as a place where all of the ghosts coexisted. The big meta idea of the book was starting to form. We were having breakfast sitting around, and they said, Well, tell us about this project. I said it all for the first time out loud, sort of in order, and they didn't roll their eyes or start checking their phones or look bored, and their reaction let me know that I was onto something. The idea that you can make a serious academic case that Manifest Destiny was not achieved out in the West but somewhere else. Greg Grandin makes that argument about the American-Mexican border in "The End of the Myth." Based on maps I have, you can make that argument for the Mississippi Delta. And I think that, if Manifest Destiny is the wellspring of the American identity and all of the good and bad urges, understanding the places where that could have finally been achieved actually offers an alternate history of America that is more accurate than the one that we're taught.

Agent

Oh, my God. David Black, firmly and demonstrably, has my best interest at heart. He would go kill someone on the town square for me, which I appreciate deeply. He has made a real effort to know everyone in my life who matters to me. He's been to my mom's house. He and my wife are the two people who have access to my Apple account if I die. I mean, he is everything you could ever imagine an agent to be.

I don't like new people. I like real consistency, and I think the good shit happens when you can mind-meld with people and you know their vanities and insecurities, you know their strengths and weaknesses. You trust them completely. I feel much more comfortable around people I have known for a very long time.

Deputy Editor, The Atlantic

Denise is a fabulous editor. I mean, I firmly believe the best two magazine editors in America right now are Denise and the mighty, mighty Eric Neel. Denise is fabulous, funny, cool and smart, confident, and she did a masterful job. I really enjoyed her voice in my ear. The person in the acknowledgments who probably needs the most credit is Eric Neel, my ESPN editor. His read of this manuscript was incredible. He helped me create the eye of the needle to use during the cut. The rule was, if I can see the barn or any of the people who intersected in it in 1955 from where I am narratively standing, it can stay in. And if I couldn’t, it has to go, no matter how much I like it. That was the system that we came up with.

Sports Columnist, Chicago Sun-Times

He's got his byline hanging on the wall at the Billy Goat, which is the highest honor a journalist could have. I met him when I was in college. I was covering the Super Bowl the Rams were in, and he took a real interest and offered great writing advice. He was the first person to really express that they believed I could do this. The hardest part, I think, about making it in this business is continuing, despite the industry telling you over and over again that it doesn't want you. The hardest thing when you're young is just to keep going. I look back and I'm not sure I would have the faith to do it again. But there were people like Rick, who just kept saying, You can do this despite all of the rejection. None of this exists without him.

My dad had three brothers. There were four of them, and Michael is the last one alive. That felt important to acknowledge.

Thompson's wife

Dude, I feel like the whole acknowledgment should just be a repetitive thank you and apology to my wife, because I carried this around in my head for four years. I wasn't a treat, you know what I mean? She's incredible. I feel like the byline is a joint creation of me and her. It's kind of the family business; I couldn't do this without the vicarious confidence and belief, and I mean truly, the rest of it would be impossible.

I was a real mess before we met. I'd probably be dead.

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Elon Green is the author of "The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York" and "Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York," for which he won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, and appears in "Unspeakable Acts," Sarah Weinman’s anthology of true crime.