Wright Thompson on Untangling Myth from History in America

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1:04Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

1:56Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. So a lot of the guests on this podcast come out from Austin, and it's about a 45-minute drive, but it gets rural real quick. You take 71. Usually I take 812 when I'm going to my house, and then so I come here backwards, but you start to pass a number of farms, and you see on those farms these kind of old barns. I have one on my ranch. I don't know exactly when it was built. That's the weird thing. These buildings just come with the place and you don't know who built it. And you don't know what happened in that building. When I walk into my barn, it's dark, but light sort of pours through because there's cracks in it and the windows are old and it's coming apart at various seams, but there's a darkness and a lightness to it.

2:49And I can only imagine what it must have been like for today's guest, Ray Thompson, to walk into a barn smack there in the middle of Mississippi, where one of the most horrendous moments of American history occurred, the murder of Emmett Till. It was a barn that people didn't know existed because so much of the story about Emmett Till has been obscured, misreported, misremembered. And that's something I think about. Actually, when I moved to my ranch, I was being shown around by a neighbor who I would buy hay from. And he's like, hey, look, these are the slave quarters on my ranch. Texas wasn't where I was.

3:31It wasn't super productive land. So there weren't a lot of slaves, but certainly existed in this part of the country. And just the casualness with which he pointed out that that's where this sort of monstrous crime happened. And what other monstrous, more recent crimes have happened that we don't talk about? I've talked about the Confederate statue here in the little town that I'm in. And I know about the town my ranch is in is a little town. And for a very brief period after the Civil War, the county judge, sort of like the county mayor, was black until he was sort of railroaded on flimsy charges, shot at in court, and sort of driven from public life.

4:13Sort of vigilante violence is an ever-present part of the Southern story. And it's a part of today's podcast where I'm talking with one of my absolute favorite people and one of my absolute favorite writers. And usually when people do the podcast, I give them a tour in my office. And when I brought Wright Thompson up, the first thing he noticed is Walker Percy. I have this little painting done by a previous Daily Stoic podcast guest, Garland Robinette. It's this little New Orleans themed painting of one of my favorite novelists And my guest today, Wright Thompson's favorite novelist, the one and only Walker Percy, he told me that on his flight to Texas to do this interview, he was surrounded by a number of Persys on the flight.

4:57They're an old Mississippi family from Greenville, Mississippi, steeped in stoic philosophy, and then also kind of tragic tertiary characters in Wright's incredible new book, The Barn, which is about the murder of Emmett Till. and its relation to American history, the way we lie to ourselves about the past, how we make the past seem very distant when in fact it is not distant at all, the horrible ways that human beings can be stirred up to do terrible things, the way we, other people, the way our humanity can be lost and the timelessness of those human tendencies. It's a beautiful book. You absolutely have to read it.

5:43one of my favorite books this year. You have to read The Barn, The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi. For every American, it's a history book you have to read. For everyone else in the world, it is a history book you have to read. It's also, in a way, a fascinating true crime book. I don't want to reduce it to that. I'm not just saying it's like eat your vegetables kind of reading. It's a riveting, beautiful book. Everything that Wright Thompson writes, He signed copies of The Barn while he was here. He signed The Cost of These Dreams and Pappyland, two other wonderful books from him. The Cost of These Dreams is a book I recommend to so many people.

6:20It's one of my all-time favorite sports books. He's an amazing writer. You can follow him at WrightThompsonBooks and WrightThompson.com. Listen to my other episodes with him on the podcast. And thanks to Wright for coming out.

6:36here's your fun fact because i watched the uh i watched the and maybe everybody knows this i didn't but i watched the ken burns civil war thing of course it's incredible so i went to find where so nathan bedford forest was originally buried cemetery in memphis yeah they exhumed him he and his wife and moved him to the statue downtown which is like a block and a half from sun studios which I love that. Yeah, sure. And, uh, but they left the rest of his family in the cemetery, uh, which I thought was very cruel because they had a child die young and they left her in the ground alone there. Right.

7:11Because he's just a symbol. They don't give a shit. It just really offended me. Yeah. Yeah. Like as of you didn't move, like, fuck you. Right. Right. Right. But I'm walking around and I look down and do you know who, if, if this is where Nathan Bedford Forrest had originally been buried. Yeah. You know who's buried where those monitors are? No. Shelby Foote. Really? Fucking blew my mind. He got himself buried literally - That's not an accident. No. Next to the Forrest family plot in Elmland Cemetery of Memphis. Okay. So I have a stoicism thing that pertains to Shelby Foote, and then we'll dig into the book.

7:44Yeah, yeah. Okay. So there's this interesting thing I sort of described. So George Long is this British writer who becomes a professor at the University of Virginia in the mid-1840s, I think. And he's the main translator of Marcus Rios. He's the first sort of popular English translation of Marcus Rios. Like, you could still read it today. It's very readable. So he comes to America from Britain, but he just gets caught up in kind of lost cause mythology. I think he's later like buried with a slave or a servant back in England, but he dedicates his translation of Marcus Reelius to the example of Robert E.

8:25Lee. Like he becomes just caught up in the lost cause mythology. And then so that's one end of the sort of Southern Stoic spectrum. Then on the other end, there's this guy, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who's like a contemporary of Emerson. He translates Epictetus, but he leads one of the only black regiments in the US Civil War. So he goes south. He leads these black troops. He also discovers and publishes Emily Dickinson, which is a crazy good guy. And by the way, a unit of black Union soldiers in Yazoo City, Mississippi, kicked the shit out of Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry. Yeah. It may have been him.

9:04I forget where he - I'd opt to check. But like his vaunted cavalry went head to head with a black unit in Yazoo City and just got smoked. So you have this sort of spectrum. And then right in the middle, I feel like you have the Percy family who's obsessed with the Stoics. It's this multi-generations of it. So what's today? Today is Friday. Friday. On Saturday night, it was me and a group of people. And we were at my favorite restaurant, Do's Eat Place in Greenville, Mississippi. and the entire Percy family came in and had dinner sitting down next to us. Oh, that's amazing. No, so they're all still there.

9:38And like Roy Percy's a federal judge. Yeah. There's a big passage from Marcus Aurelius in the moviegoer that the aunt recites, and the aunt is modeled on William Alexander Percy who introduces Walker to Stoic philosophy. That's right. And so, yeah, I was just like, there's this weird kind of Southern breed of Stoicism that's more lowercase stoicism than uppercase stoicism. But I find the Percy family so fascinating because you have these intellectual, decent, good people. And then at the same time, like you talk about in the book, also pretty complicit with the status quo and the system. Well, like Senator Percy, his son, who wrote Lanterns on the Levy, was - Amazing book.

10:26I love that book. Was trying to get people out after. So the 1927 flood, the levee broke at the Delta Pine and Land Plantation. So the senator's son had found boats and they were going to get everybody out. Yeah. But his father was like, we can't have, we're going to need labor to try to salvage a crop. Yeah. Can't get rid of our valuable asset. And so they wouldn't, so the Senator Percy canceled the boats. Yeah. Yeah. And like wouldn't that's why they had like labor camps on high ground holding people in place because they thought if they leave, they'll never come back, which, by the way, they were right.

11:06Yeah. It would have started a great migration earlier. Wait, it already started. Like, so that was twenty seven. Twenty three is when Mamie Till's family left Mississippi. Like it had already started. Yeah. But, you know, the Percy family, they were the central they were the enemies of the clan. Yeah. Like, you know, they were the foils for Vardaman and Bilbo and those crazy Mississippi. Yeah. So, like, it is interesting. You know, if you're in the South, you know, there are two very different kinds of racism. Yeah. And both are terrible and both affect people's lives in really dramatic ways. And it's this class-based.

11:43Yeah. And there's the super virulent clan. And there's like genteel racism. And then there's the paternalism of we know better. Yeah. And so the Percy's are that yes. Yes. And, uh, you know, it's interesting. I went out to see the dead and company at the sphere and, uh, got on the airplane and there was, uh, and I know him really well. There were two Percy's flying out to go see the dead. Yeah. Like it, uh, I love them. We could do a whole one of these on the movie goer. Oh, it's my favorite. I love the movie goer. Go read Richard Ford right after reading the movie goer. Yeah. It's so clear. The sports writer.

12:18Yeah, yeah. It's so clear, the influence. I just saw a copy. There's the corrections somewhere. There is no corrections without the moviegoer. Yeah. No, it's such a brilliant novel. And then, yeah, the sort of stoicism kind of... He's almost presenting the stoicism as the antiquated thing that he's kind of getting away from. But it is a fascinating book with a lot of stoicism in it. And my favorite Walker Percy novel is Lancelot. Yeah, I've never read that. Oh, dude, it's so good. I used an epigraph from Lancelot as the opening for my book Conspiracy. My mom knew him. Really? Yeah. My mom and his daughter both had their debutante debut the same day.

12:58Really? Walker Percy's daughter? Yeah. The one who was deaf? I don't know. Oh, interesting. But yeah, he's so fascinating to me. She owned a bookstore that he would write in, and I only found that out later. The theater is still in New Orleans, the Britannia. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've seen a bunch of movies. Yeah, I love it. I did that too. The certification thing. Yeah. Right. Which is like, ironically, a certification when you're like, I've been there. That's right. What we just did is certification. No, I love that novel so much. Lancelot's my favorite because there's not very many good novels in the second person and Lancelot's in the second person.

13:30Yeah. I mean, they're like, that whole era. I mean, it's like, you know, there's a lot of sort of agrarians. Yeah. Because when I'm sort of talking about how, one of the threads is how Nathan Bedford forest exist in the Southern imagination and how it's always changing and being dude, the lawyer for the forest family, he and I were driving in Nashville and he was taking me out to the house. And he said, uh, they'd reburied Nathan Bedford forest in a private ceremony and we're driving. And I don't know why this, I just looked at him and like, did you bury him in uniform? And it was a long pause and he looked and he goes, yes and i was like so somebody was touching the body and dressing bones that's crazy uh and i said what i'm like where did you get it yeah he smiled and there is a there's a civil war reenactment uniform tailor in corinth mississippi that makes super high-end bespoke uniforms and uh I was just like, that wasn't a replica.

14:37Yeah. That was a real Confederate uniform. Or a real Confederate. Yes. And like, it just blows my mind. And it's still there. That like they made these tailors. Yeah. I mean, it's the, you know, art imitating life. It's like, you know, the thing we talked about, like the political cycle of cynics to true believers. Yeah. Like there is a tailor in Corinth, Mississippi who has made a real Confederate uniform. Yeah. Like not, it's just like. Yeah. The weird thing, I remember watching the Ken Burns Civil War documentary and Shelby Foote comes off as awesome and he's fascinating. That's why I was so bummed out.

15:14Yeah. But you realize, oh, there's something a little darker about your fascination with Nathan Bedford Forrest. And then I went and read about Forrest and you go, first off, he wasn't that good of a general. He was a psycho, like a literal psychopath. Not just like, even the people during the war on both sides were like, this dude's fucking nuts. And so there's something, it sullies the Shelby Foote legend a little bit. Well, the other thing, and like, you know, Robert E. Lee, I mean, Gettysburg was a terrible idea, But like he understood the danger of the lost cause mythology and of his own potential symbolism.

15:53Like he didn't want any of these statutes. Like he was like, we lost. We need to move on. Yeah. And like, it's just interesting how sophisticated he was in understanding everything that was going to happen in his name. Yeah. You know, I remember when I was growing up, I don't know if these still do, but like there were gas stations in rural Tennessee and they would sell shot glasses and T-shirts and bumper stickers that said Lee surrendered. I didn't. Yeah. Like they were everywhere. Yeah. And they were like Hank Williams Jr. flags that had like all sorts of Confederate shit on it and like Confederate flags that had the big Bocephus logo.

16:31Yeah. I'm like, anyway, I just remember that so clearly. And like when Lee wrote about that and seemed really aware of what was coming and the danger of it. Yeah. I think one of the things that struck me early in your book was that as they're murdering Emmett Till, there's just that converse. Someone walks by and goes, I think they're murdering someone up the hall or, you know, up the road. And the casualness with which violence was just a part of daily life and accepted as part of this. I think people think of segregation as they're like, you have to drink at this water fountain, you have to drink at this water fountain, you go to this school and I go to this school, which it was.

17:09But how do you get people to accept something so unnatural and weird? It is with the constant and perpetual threat and follow through of terrifying violence. I mean, one of the defense lawyers said on the record that wealthy white people need to convince poor white people to be angry and violent. Yeah. Because that's the only way that this can continue. Yeah. I mean, like the degree to which everybody was incredibly explicit about what they were doing and why. Yes. And like you start reading this thing and it's like, I mean, I almost, I would just drop stuff. I'd be reading like, oh my God. Yeah.

17:49No, no, just widespread perpetual violence had to, that's how you would perpetuate a system like that. The sort of, there is this part of Southern culture that even now, like I think you see it, and I don't think, I'm not being extreme here. You see it now in the kind of Trump parades where it's like, it is a culture of menacing. It's like, we're going to put these big flags on the top and we're going to drive around in circles and send a message. Well, it's also just like, it's like ISIS. What kind of like small person has to put a flag on the back of their truck to feel seen? Yeah. I mean, seriously, like change the flag out.

18:26Yeah. No, no. It is important that you like, how does Afghanistan, how do the warlords in Afghanistan, how do they perpetuate a system where women don't have these various rights? It is with a constant and ritualized form of violence. Like, hey, we're going to execute this girl today. You have to make you create these cultures of this code and then you have to constantly make very public examples of people who violate that code to keep the system in place. And what's so tragic about the Emmett Till story is he he walks into it and doesn't realize. He doesn't understand what he's walking into. He doesn't understand how the moment he's walking into it is maybe as dangerous and violent as it has ever been.

19:11He also, he just turned 14. All that is, is about exploring boundaries. Yeah. And trying to get in trouble, mess around. And, and, and also like he was overweight and he had a stutter and you can just see the only thing he had to make him cool was Chicago. Yeah. And you can just see it. Yeah. Like, you know, cause like he definitely whistled. People say allegedly, and the witnesses at the store get really angry about that because they're like, why are white people calling me a liar? Yeah. Because people want to say allegedly whistled. Yeah. And so his family who was there actually get really upset about the word allegedly because they're like, we were there.

19:54He definitely whistled. Yeah. And then when he did it, it breaks my heart because their reaction to him immediately let him know that he really messed up. Yeah. Because he was, he immediately saw the look on their face and they were like, but you could just see, just turned 14, has a stutter, overweight, couldn't work in the fields, ended up having to help Elizabeth right around the house because it was too hot and too hard. Yeah. So probably felt emasculated. Yeah. Like you could do. He was a teenage boy. He was a teenage boy. Yeah. And they, they killed him for being a teenage boy. And like.

20:36It's one of the most terrible things. And that's it. Yeah. I mean, they all died really young. I mean, Mamie Till famously said, somebody asked her, like, you know, how do you feel about your son's killers getting away with it? And she's like, they didn't get away with anything. Yeah. They were shunned in life and died young, horribly painful deaths. Yeah.

21:06Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basko County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation. getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

21:51We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

22:30Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

23:14My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

23:51Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

24:11well it's i mean again it's not unlike the january 6th thing where you rile a bunch of people up you get them to do something they shouldn't have done they all bear the weight of those crimes and the stigma of those crimes and the also the despair and disillusionment of realizing that they were had or that they were the useful idiots and and then the people who were involved who actually were responsible on the higher level or like, you know, it's like Ashley Babbitt dies, but Tom Cotton, you know, no consequences. And so, and, and so that, that process, that's how it goes. Demagogues whip up people that get them to do horrible things.

24:48And then those people. It's like that great Bruce Springsteen's on the wall. What he's like, and the men who put you here eat in their fancy dining halls and apology was apologies got no place here at all and there's another line that's like like i heard robert mcnamara said he's sorry yeah and it's just like the whole thing that like the defense law i mean it's in there but the defense lawyers their descriptions of of what milam and brian did and why i mean everybody was so explicit yeah like they're just openly talking about what's going on I mean, I just was stunned. These letters, the letters, I just sat in these libraries over the course of three or four years and just read these letters with my jaw hanging open.

25:36Well, that's what's interesting about like allegedly whistled, right? The debate over allegedly whistled, what everyone is agreeing on then is that if he had whistled, That's right. that's a capital crime, which is insane. That makes no sense to anyone but a group of people whose brains have been broken for generations. And it's the culmination of that toxic ideology just being exposed to the wider public in a way that it never had been before. Well, I mean, the law enforcement who saw the body tried to get it in the ground before anyone else could because they understood, you know. And I mean, Mamie Till might be one of the bravest people who ever lived because like there's a famous picture of Emmett on his bicycle and she kept that bike.

26:29I got to be really close to the to Wheeler Parker's Emmett's cousin and best friend was the rode the train with him south to Mississippi. He was in the house when he was kidnapped. The last living witness. And it was really stunning to me. this is a murder that happened to a country and sparked a movement inspired rosa parks all but it's also a murder that happened and is still happening to a family yeah and also it happened to a person yes like the victim and he was a human being and like but like they're probably when i started this there were probably 12 people left alive who actually knew him yeah but that number is eight now i mean i'm making that up seven i mean that people and like you get the sense that like when the last of those people is gone then only the symbol is left i mean what struck me that i think the line that hit me the most about it and i'd read a lot about it before was that that they went in to get him in the house and they told him to put on his shoes and he takes a minute to put on his shoes and i was just like my son who's eight he's just he can't He can't do anything quickly.

27:39He can't get out of the car quickly. He can't put his shoes on quickly. He can't put his plate in the dishwasher quickly. It's just all... And it was like, this is a kid who can't do a thing. And in this case, he is pissing himself with fear because he must know that something terrible is about to happen. And can't yet imagine the sort of register of it. Yeah. I mean, just like the... Right, because it's incomprehensible how insane what's about to happen actually is. And the thing, the Bible is so clear about the importance of spiritual and physical neighbors. Yes. And Elizabeth Wright, he's kidnapped from their home.

28:23She runs next door and has to use a telephone. Yeah. And the White family, out of fear... We don't want to get involved. Wouldn't let her use the telephone. Yeah. And like. That could have stopped him. They could have, if the right person had answered the phone, someone could have intercepted that car or found him before. He still would have been bad off, but he might be alive. He could be alive today. He'd be like 85. Well, there's a, in the Chicago Defender, there were all these letters to the editor of people wanting pen pals. Yeah. So all of the people who are 14, 13 or 14 years old in the summer of 1955, I wrote all their names down and went and sort of found them.

29:06Yeah. And like, so, and then there's one of them in there and it was just sort of, I wanted it to be the ghost ship. Yeah. Like the, the life that he would have lived. Yeah. So there's like a thousand word thing in there about someone who was writing a letter to the editor and the sum and from Vaughn, Mississippi. and its whole point in the narrative is this is the life that was left unlived and it's brutal and like you know uh i was talking to wheeler parker one time and i was just like he'd been doing a lot of thought about remembering everything he everything that emmet ever said about faith and believing in jesus and everything other people said yeah because he was trying to sort out for himself whether Emmett would be in heaven to meet him when he died.

29:54Like that's real stuff. Yeah. And like, I mean, Wheeler Parker should be on American money. Yeah. I mean, I, I went with him to the, uh, and I just love him and his wife, Marvell. They're incredible people. The book is dedicated to them. Um, I went with them to the, uh, African American history museum and they have the original casket yeah and uh because they had to zoom his body when the fbi opened it and they reburied him and so the original casket is in a museum is in the museum and boy he got out of that room ryan he was just making noises yeah and like but it's interesting we we walked out of that museum we were like halfway up before he really spoke again and when he did he was just like we can't let people forget yeah and you know i think i said this earlier but like if the book has an animating conflict it is memory versus erasure yeah and like you know you learn about one barn to learn about all the barns you learn about one act of violence to learn about all the acts of violence you write about 136 square mile block of land to write about all of them and like it really starts to pile on itself well first off history is political we're always fighting over what we want to remember or what we don't want to talk about.

31:12And so it's interesting. History will judge. No, it won't. Right. Right. Because we, we, but the idea that history is supposed to be pleasant is that like, that like people want this version of American history that shows what's amazing about America. And it's like, I'm not sure that's what we need to be learning about. We need, you want to be focusing on the horrendous stuff so you don't fucking do it again. And also like that, what is that so insecure? Like I'm very, you know, I still tear up a little when the national anthem is played before a sporting event. I mean, I just grew up like with a deep inherited love and respect for America.

31:46Look at it. It's awesome. You can see it. And so that's history is something other than celebration. And like, yes. And that like, I mean, America is still trying to do something that no other country in the world has ever even tried to do. Yeah. And like the whole point should be our whole history should be focus. It should be two things. It should be what is the ideal of the experiment and what is every example where we have fallen short of it. And like the fact that people think that is somehow the fact that their love for America isn't strong enough to handle that conversation. their lack of patriotism, their lack of love of America, their lack of understanding of what America is and what it is trying to do that is different.

32:34Just because you don't get your country and you don't actually love it. I don't know why you would try to ruin it. Well, here's the thing. When you look at these dark, so you peel back the onion on this, there's good people and bad people. You said there's brave people and coward. So when you explore something dark and twisted, you're also seeing the courageous people. Have you read Halberstam's book called The Children? Yes. Incredible. But the character that jumped out to me most in that book was not all the monstrous white people. It was Floyd Mann. And who's the sheriff in this book that tries to do a good job?

33:09George Smith is like trying to do the right thing. Yes. Clint Sheridan is trying to do the right thing. I mean, over and over, you see, it makes the people who are willing to do anything against the status quo. Yeah. It makes you realize how brave they were and how strong their moral core was. Because even if you didn't agree with what they were doing, they were like putting it on the line. Yeah. It says, someone pointed this out, but it says something about what you think of your children, that when you think that when they hear this story, they're going to identify and feel shame for being the shitty people as opposed to seeing the good people and going, I want to be one of those people.

33:53And also, this is a story of the rise and ride of a tribe of people, of which I'm one. And I love my tribe of people. And you come spend a weekend with me in the Mississippi Delta. I'll show you the best three days you ever had. It is a magical place full of people. It's like my whole love of sense of place is rooted in this. and my love for it and my deep inherited roots in it, as opposed to being threatened by our actual history. If you don't know your actual history, you're just cosplaying your life. Like we're not like, what are we even doing? Well, you talked about, you went back and you got your like high school textbook where you talk and it's like basically some two guys did a bad thing and then that made us look bad.

34:39That's like the entirety of the Emmett Hill thing. And it's like the assumption there was that if we tell people what really happens, these young kids are going to see and relate to and are going to think they're the murderers as opposed to let's have them tell a story and they're going to relate to the courage of Emmett Till's mother and the courage of the sheriff who did the right thing. Or, you know, Willie Reed, 18 years old, agrees to testify. I mean, Willie Reed should be on American money. That's what I mean. When you study the dark parts of history, you realize, okay, it was a lot worse than I thought, but there's also the aspiration to do and be good is still there.

35:16And that that's, America is those people, the struggle in spite of, and often failing in the moment to beat back them. And that it's both. It's people who do both. I mean, it's the, you know, it's George Washington who was, who owned slaves and thought that the Choctaw nation should be sovereign. Sure. It's Thomas Jefferson who knew it was wrong and did it anyway. Yeah. And like in those lives, you find the roadmap together forward. And like, I, it's just like all the ratio is bad and all memory. Yeah. Is good. I don't, it's not, that's not that simplistic, but like, there's something there about like real memory.

36:05I'm going to talk that out. I mean, because the word memory to me also feels deeply influenced by mythology. Like the word memory feels different than a resuscitation of historical facts. Like it feels like when something is a memory, it you're acknowledging just from the definition of the word that this is my memory. Yeah. It's not the memory. It's my memory. There's this horrifying, but also incredible. And I mean that in the truest sense of that word passage where this soldier who was involved in the Trail of Tears, he's dying. It's like 100. He calls his family in and he decides to tell him what actually happened.

36:48Oh, shit. And you read it and you're like, what he did was heroic in the sense that he didn't take the secret to his grave. That's right. That's the thing. Carolyn Brunt took her secret to her grave. Can you imagine? the very first question if there are pearly gates yeah the very first question she's getting asked is what the actual fuck yeah what's wrong with you what's wrong with you yeah and uh like i mean no one ever tell like so leslie milam who owned the barn yeah 1974 his wife calls up macklin hubble who's their priest preacher uh baptist preacher and says can you come leslie wants to see you.

37:28Preacher goes over to the house, walks in. Uh, Leslie is laid out on the couch in the front room, a lot of natural light. And he says, uh, what's going on? Leslie's dying. Yeah. And Leslie says, I need to confess something. Yeah. And he's like, what? Uh, I talked to, uh, Reverend Hevel has since died, but I, he was alive when I, I went and spent the day with him. And, uh, Leslie Milam said, I killed him at till like I was involved in the killing of him at till and he just wanted to tell someone. And the preacher, I mean, I write this in the book, but the preacher said he remembered feeling a little disgusted because it felt like Leslie was trying to lawyer his way to heaven.

38:09Yeah. That even then he was just thought he could like pull a fast one on God. Yeah. And like, if I do this right now, I'm good. Yeah. And he didn't live to see the sunrise again. I mean, he died that day. I mean, he confessed on his death couch, I guess. But I mean, he didn't live to see mourning. Well, talking about people who are not good or bad, it's complicated. I read Three Lives from Mississippi, which Martin Luther King writes a foreword to. Yeah. And the author comes off as pretty heroic and decent and not like the Southerners of that time. And then in your book, he's a fucking villain.

38:45Oh, William Bradford Huey. Yeah. What's his deal? Hubris. He had a huge bestseller in 1954. Yeah. Was feeling on top of the world. Yeah. You know, he so for people who don't know, William Bradford Huey wrote the Look magazine story that was the sort of famous confession. It was after they got off, after they got off, they confessed double jeopardy. They confessed for money. Yeah. And all of their quotes. when you read the correspondence between Huey and the defense lawyers, the quotes attributed to Milam and Bryant about upholding segregation are verbatim things that the defense lawyers were saying.

39:25These defense lawyers essentially wrote a version of the story to serve their purposes. They wanted it. They literally are saying, we are excited you are writing this story because this will make this into a warning. Yeah, right. And like they, it was on purpose. It's the final act of the crime. It's the final act of the crime. That's a, that's perfect way of putting it. And so William Bradford Huey just wanted, he went to the NAACP first. Yeah. To see if they would like, he, like he was just a soulless gun for hire. And like you read the letters and it's just, you just, if you've ever been a writer and you've ever had any writerly hubris.

40:07Yeah. You recognize it. You talk about the importance of learning the history. Yeah. Like it was very important for me because he does a thing that I've sort of done, which is if you have New York editors, they sometimes sort of like it when you tell stories about the South. Yeah. And like the urge to crank him to a character. He's playing a character. Yeah. And the urge to crank him to 11. Yeah. And like. Yeah. With the suspenders. All that bullshit. Yeah. And like he didn't write it, but it's the Robert Earl Kane. I may not wear a Stetson, but I'm willing to bet, son, that I'm as big a Texan as you are.

40:43Yeah. And like, you know, there's this, people want to wear costumes sometimes, like real and metaphysical. But like Huey, man, he did a lot of damage. Yeah, because he was also kind of complicit in that crime. But some of the lies he told still exist. I mean, the many different people have been told that Emmett's body was thrown off of the Black Bio Bridge in Glendore, Mississippi. I mean, the Secretary of the Interior, I believe, was told that on a tour. It's just not true. When you pull up aerial photographs from 1955, it didn't connect to where the body was found. Like this whole story has been told and like, you know, you have like the secretary of the interior out there crying at this site and it's the William Bradford Huey.

41:34There's a museum in the Delta run by a really well-intentioned guy, I think, where a lot of the history in the museum is from the Huey account. I mean, we're still trying to sort of escape the gravitational pull of it. Yeah. It's just like, I think that's an important question you got to ask yourself as a person, especially now in the world where like, it used to be like, these are journalists over here. This is everyone else. Journalists have this code. Journalists have this thing. Now we're all kind of that. So you have to ask yourself when you repeat stuff, when you talk about stuff, when you have a podcast or, right.

42:03But who am I carrying water for? Who am I carrying water for? I mean, one of the reasons. Who benefits from me saying it this way versus that way. And like one of the reasons that it's so relentlessly end noted is you got to show your work. Yeah. And like, you know, we had a really rigorous fact check because like one, I'm a perfectionist, but two, like you, like this is serious business. Yeah. You can't accidentally be Huey. Yeah. Or intentionally, God forbid. But I mean, like most of the time you can't like actively, you know. Right. You got to show your work. Yeah.

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44:49And you got to think about where am I getting this who benefit i mean look the news story this week is that there were a bunch of podcasters some who i know uh before they you know went insane who uh were basically funded by a russian propaganda arm and by the way there's one idiot i can't remember which one who was like i'm imagining the accent sorry i was just about to do it tim pool the guy who said i wrote all of it how could they tell me no one told me what to write i mean i know i've met him before i've talked to him he He was a regular person like eight years ago. So what I would just say to him is like, you dumbass.

45:24They don't have to tell you what to write. They have decided that your worldview is on its own without them doing anything, an enemy of the American experiment. You've spun yourself around. They know they just got to give you some money and you'll keep doing your thing. Yeah. Like you're already doing it. Yes. Your idea is so wrong that the Russian security services think that funding it is a weapon against the American. Let me ask you this. Isn't that a treason? Not knowing any better isn't an excuse. Not knowing the law is like you're a foreign agent. It's just because you're too dumb to know you're in the KGB.

46:11Yeah. Which doesn't. Right. Like, I don't like - Right, no, no, but that's where we've gotten though. We were talking about this earlier. Like we exist now in a world where like what it really comes down to is going to be ultimately whether that was strictly legal or illegal. The sense that it's morally repugnant or insane or a bad way to spend your life or not a good thing to do for society. That's all irrelevant. People are like, we're victims. Yeah. Oh, okay. But do you know what I mean? Like whether it's strictly legal or not is the concern. It's the thing we talked about with the ESPN person who was telling me that company policy meant that it was like we live in a world of situational ethics that is so pervasive that that you like one of the real one of the reasons I think that Stoics are having such a moment is people are desperate for a non-relativist moral code.

47:06Yes. Where they're like an absolute right and an absolute wrong. And this whataboutism. Well, you know, I was at the White House a year ago for this book when Wheeler Parker introduced Joe Biden. I walked out of that room terrified because I was like, he's in a lot worse shape than we're being told. Yeah. And the degree to which Democrat they were lying to the American public. and the degree to which people who I love want to defend him for that out of like a whataboutism. Like there's just such a moral relativity now where nothing's wrong if it's your tribe doing it. Yeah. And like we just like Willie Reed who agreed to testify and totally blew up his life.

47:51I mean, he's one of the main characters in this book. His grandfather told him not to do it. Yeah. Because he knew what was going to happen. Yeah. He didn't get rewarded. Right. He testified and it ruined his life. Yeah. And he ran from those ghosts for that changed his name. Yeah. Like he was not rewarded whatsoever in any shape, form or fashion in this life for doing the right thing. Yeah. Doing the right thing often has no material reward. And in fact, often brings terrible consequences. It certainly did for all these witnesses in this case. When you think about William Bradford Huey, right?

48:27What I loved about Three Lives for Mississippi was Mickey Schmermer. He goes down there. He's doing what's obviously the right thing. And, you know, he's just, it's not like they threw him a parade. I mean, he was viciously murdered and dumped in a ditch and then piled dirt over. In the Bogachitta swamp. You know, my wife worked at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at Ole Miss. and she worked down the hall from Rita Schwerner, who was Mickey's widow. Wow. She stayed? She came back to do a thing. Wow. And it just, every time I saw her there, and do you know the name of the building that her office was in?

49:07Something terrible, right? Vardaman Hall. The past isn't dead, it isn't even past. Yeah. And like, there's this incredible, let me see this thing, the conspiracy of Southern politicians. Here we go, this is. What do you think of Schwerner's last words? I can't wrap my head around them. Do you think it's true? That he said it? Oh, because Huey might have made them up? Do I have an index? Yes, I do. Well, that's fun. For people who don't know, you don't have to make your own index. It just shows up. They charge you for it, but it shows up. That's right. Can you imagine making this yourself? All right.

49:43Sun House. All right. Check this out. This is when the civil rights workers have gone missing. Oh, were they gaslit Johnson about it? Because they were totally gaslighting Johnson about it. And the, oh, here we go. This is it. Senator Eastland told President Johnson the civil rights workers weren't actually missing and that it was all a publicity stunt designed to make the good white people of Mississippi look bad. Eastland hung up. Exactly six minutes later, Johnson got a call from the FBI telling him that the burned wreck of a station wagon had been found 30 feet off the highway through the Boga Cheetah Swamp.

50:23six minutes yeah and like over and over every conspiracy theory they said that it wasn't Emmett Till's body when they exhumed the reason they exhumed Emmett Till when they were going to try to retry this case is because they were that was it was it was proven in court that the body was not so they did a DNA test of course it was it is kind of fascinating that that's an underexplored part of the civil rights movement where you have people like Johnson I mean Johnson's born racist raised by racists, partly like the awakening that they have when they realize like the other politicians aren't just doing it cynically, but really believe it and are ready to take it to extremes that even a Johnson wouldn't consider.

51:09Do you know what I mean? Like his awaken, like those six minutes changed Johnson's life. Cause this guy is just like every time he thinks he's dealing with a genteel racist and realizes he's dealing with a well because and and the thing i would argue is that they're the same thing and so like of course so like but like it's interesting though because not of course i mean because like you know the the difference between vardaman and percy yeah who were mortal enemies you know i mean i think like you only really see the south when you see race and class together because uh so many books focus on one or the other sure and the Venn diagram of that becomes really interesting.

51:50I mean, like the, uh, the only, so the, the federal government bought the Sunflower plantation in the 1930s, uh, because all of the farm subsidies that were written as part of the new deal, I mean, essentially all still exist. And what they did was they statutorily tried to set the buying power of farmers to equal what it was between like 1916 and 1920. So first of all, if it ever seems like Mississippi is stuck in the past that's because statutorily it is yeah uh but the other thing that's really interesting is the federal government bought the sunflower plantation which in some ways you realize like oh this is a bail this is a this is a move to improve the economy because we have these big industrialists and cotton has been replaced by oil and synthetics let's figure out a way for them to get their capital out of here so they can deploy it somewhere else in the economy they bought this plantation and then they broke it up into 40 acre plots.

52:46Yeah. And then they moved all of the black sharecroppers off. So the Roosevelt administration was fighting with local plantation owners. The plantation owners were trying to get the sharecroppers to be able to keep the land. Yeah. And the Roosevelt administration took it from them. Interesting. So the guy who owned the barn where Emmett Till was killed was fighting with the Roosevelt administration on behalf of the sharecroppers. Right. You'd think it would be the other way around. Yeah, sure. And he's writing letters. He's being like, can somebody explain to me why you're kicking? These people are great farmers.

53:20They're great neighbors. They have a church here. They have a cemetery. They've been here for generations. If you're going to give this land to someone, why don't you give it to them? And the Roosevelt administration had all these ideas about best practices. And so they were trying to go find superior farmers from out of state. And so they didn't know they were being racist. Right. That's the systemic racism. But it's just wild. And so they moved all of these people in. So the Delta never really, the Klan never really had a foothold because the Delta was these huge plantation blocks. And the plantation owners, the last thing they wanted was a bunch of rednecks scaring their labor.

53:57Right. And so the Perses of the world were able to keep the Klan out. Yeah. Except in this one block of Drew, Mississippi surrounding the barn where Emmett Till was killed, which was the only real place like this in the central Delta where there were lots of small white farmers. Right. And so the reason that people talk about there was a Klan in Drew when there wasn't in other places in the Delta was all because of that. And so it was the unintended consequences of sort of U.S. Department of Agriculture best practices. And I mean, so like over and over the unintended consequences. Yeah. When people talk about reparations, they skip over more recent injustices that were done by the state to groups of people.

54:42And also like the. Like it wasn't this thing that happened once. It was a perpetual, perpetuated. And like when I grew up in Mississippi, like everything was on a charge account because it wasn't really a cash economy. Yeah. Because nobody had money till the crops were sold in November and then everybody got straight. Yeah. So the degree to which all large scale agriculture is, I mean, it's not a Ponzi scheme. That's totally unfair. And it isn't at all. But it is, it's a lot of moving stuff around on paper. Yeah. And it's a lot - It's financially engineered in a way that you don't, it seems like honest work and an honest living, but it's - It's all credit.

55:19Yeah. And the banks determine what you plant based on prices. Yeah. And like, you know, we farm, we have to get a huge crop loan every year. And so it's all based on credit and credit. Like if I had my family farm with the exact same amount of land and the exact same financial history, and I went in to get a loan, I wouldn't be able to get as good a loan as my uncle who runs the farm because he has their faith and he's been doing it a long time and they trust him. So credit is already, it's already interpersonal. And it's already like we try to have forms for people to fill out, but it really is.

55:56If you're the banker, do you believe I'm going to pay you back? Right. And so, you know, the ways in which credit markets screwed people and you had, you know, black farmers who had no access to credit and a really thin, like a really short leash on getting foreclosed. Right. And like the degree to which their reparations owed for that. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, that's, and, you know, and it's interesting too, because like most of the people who own the land, most of the land, like the old Milan plantation is owned by a publicly traded company that's owned by, you know, BlackRock and Vanguard.

56:33And like, if you have a 401k, you own plantations. Yeah, sure. And so these are most like a lot of the old families around where we farm, like they didn't make it through the 80s. So these are like Bill Gates is the third largest landowner in the state of Mississippi. like so like these are huge institutional owners of this land because it's it's uh farmland is not is inflation proof yeah and so and it's not tied to other fundamentals in in the markets yeah so like huge like pension funds 401ks high net worth people there's always like a bedrock level of farmland and like so one of the animating ideas of the book is like following the money yeah and like why is it so often that the more land the more land the more valuable dirt is, the less valuable humans are.

57:19I don't know. I mean, there's, so it's like, all of that is incredibly interesting about how the cognitive dissonance and the sort of unintended consequences. Yeah. The last thing I was going to ask you about is you talk about it towards the end, but you sort of had this teenage rebellion, apathetic, you know, sort of, if I don't try, then when I fail, it doesn't say anything about me. And then you're sort of embracing kind and some Southern mythology, but you had this sort of teacher that sets you straight. And I think that's such an interesting intervention because it's so hard to get people, as we said, it's hard to get people to understand things that are painful to understand.

57:58And he managed to do that to you in a way. Well, the story is, I was at an event at the courthouse where the trial was, and it was an anniversary. It was the National Park dedication. And Gloria Dickerson, one of the people, And one of the people, like the heroes of this book was speaking and she asked, she did this thing sort of like a moment of silence, but just breathing. And the story I'm about to tell, I hadn't thought of in 20 years, like swear to God. Yeah. And it came back to me and I, it was so incredible. And I just remember, so I remember like had all these Confederate flags and Confederate stuff.

58:37and like I went to a boarding school and I hated the boarding school. I just was totally lost and like really struggled and like trying to find an identity and like had all this sort of Confederate iconography. And I had a teacher at the boarding school. It was a music teacher. I've been trying to find the guy's name separate from this. Oh, you can't remember. I cannot remember. It's Dan something. But when I Google it, so anyway, uh, he basically pulled me aside and instead of just screaming at me was just like, you're an idiot. You don't understand what this means to people. Yeah. And walked me through it.

59:10And I just remember in that moment feeling so ashamed that like, I didn't know. Yeah. You know, I write in here that I want everybody to read this book. Yeah. Like I want to, I want to sell a quadrillion copies, you know, all of it. But like, I really want every idiot 18 year old. But you didn't know because people worked very hard for you not to know. Well, my entire, dude, like my high school, this is not a joke. My high school history teacher called the Civil War, the War of Northern Aggression. Yeah. Like, I'm not kidding. Like, I just grew up in a world in which none of this was taught. And like, if you don't, if you don't really know the history of your home, then you really don't know anything.

59:56Yeah. And you, if you don't really know where you're from, like really know, then you're not from anywhere. Yeah. And you're just adrift and none of this is real. And I felt like this started during the pandemic. Like I was working on a story and, uh, I was, I was doing the, I wanted to do the great migration story of every member of the Los Angeles Lakers. Oh, wow. And so Avery Bradley was on that team and Avery Brad. And so one of the Avery Bradley's from Mount Bio, Mississippi, which is very close to the barn. And one of the witnesses who testified was a woman named Amanda Bradley. So there was this brief moment where I wondered.

1:00:32Yeah. And they're not related. But in the process of finding that out, one of the Till scholars I talked to was like, do you know about the barn? And I'm like, what barn? And here we are. And so it was the fact that I didn't know any of this, you know, never again. Yeah. Yeah. And the only reason like it's a fluke and a random, it's like, despite everyone's best efforts, the barn is still there. Like it's the one unlucky break these people didn't get. Well, it's like the, there's a, uh, uh, architects or, or sort of have been mapping and studying the barn because they're going to turn it into like a museum.

1:01:16That's all just started. Like Anne Frank's house or something like that. When they came in and did all of the, like they did this incredible imaging and it's totally structurally unsound. And they're like, they actually don't understand why a stiff wind hadn't just knocked it over. Yeah. And like, I love the idea that, you know. because if it was gone basically the every other part of the crime is destroyed and it just and then erasure wins i mean like there sometimes you do wonder if the arc of the moral universe bends toward erasure you know i mean like it so like i don't know that you know there's a great grateful deadline that i love we used to play for silver now we play for life and i just felt like Like, you know, if my girls ever say, where are we from?

1:02:05I can just hand them this. Yeah. Well, it's incredible, man. I want to show you some books. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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