Wright Thompson on Reckoning with the South’s Buried Secrets

Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Junior were born in the same year. The last known widow of a Civil War veteran lived to see Barack Obama become the first African-American President. Emmett Till would be the same age as Neil Diamond, Martha Stewart, and Bob Dylan in 2024 if he was not brutally tortured and murdered in 1955. Facts like these remind us that history is not as far away as we think it is. 

Wright Thompson, is a Senior Writer at ESPN and author of The Cost of These Dreams, Pappyland, and most recently, The Barn, which uncovers the real story of Emmett Till’s murder in the Mississippi Delta. Wright joins Ryan to talk about the impact of cognitive dissonance, how political rhetoric has shaped racial violence, why history is closer than we think, the rise and fall of the cotton boom, and what it was like for Wright to learn the truth about Emmett Till’s story. 

You can get signed copies of The Barn and Wright’s other books, The Cost of These Dreams, Pappyland, at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/

You can follow him on Instagram @wrightthompsonbooks or head to his website, https://wrightthompson.com/

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