In The Louis Till File, John Edgar Wideman searches for Louis Till, a silent victim of American injustice. In 1955, Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi because he was a colored boy who had, allegedly, whistled at a white woman. Wideman examines this death with that of Emmett's father, Louis Till, who was executed by the U.S. Army in 1945 in Italy, after being found guilty of murder and rape. After reading decades later about Louis's execution, he couldn't escape the twin tragedies of father and son, and tells their stories together for the first time. The result is a conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons.