In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man,
then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of
violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955
killing of Emmett Till--James Baldwin launches an unsparing
and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For
where once a white storekeeper could have shot a "boy" like
Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. And
centuries of brutality and fear, patronage and contempt, are
about to erupt in a moment of truth as devastating as a
shotgun blast.
In his award-winning play, Baldwin
turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which
even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated--and in
which even a killer receives his share of compassion.