Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case

 Crowe, Chris. Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case. 2003. 128p. ISBN 9780803728042. Available at 364.15 CRO on the library shelves.

In 1955, Emmett Till, 1 4 year-old Black teen, was brutally murdered in Mississippi for wolf whistling at a White woman. His death sparked outrage and ignited the Civil Righs Movement. Born in 1941 in Chicago, Emmett Till had the opportunity in the summer of 1955 to go down to Mississippi and spend time with relatives. African Americans had difficult lives in the northern parts of the United States, facing discrimination, but this was nothing compared to how African Americans were treated in the South. The legacy of Jim Crow and of slavery ensured that African Americans were considered expendable second-class citizens at best.

Emmett was warned by his mother to never talk back at White folks, and keep his eyes down. This advice he either forgot or chose to ignore it on one steamy August day, when he was hanging out with his friends and relatives near the only grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Goaded by the kids around him, he went inside the store, and allegedly asked the woman running the store out on a date, and then whistling at her when she came out of the store. Three days later, the woman's husband enlisted confederates to teach Emmett a lesson which resulted in his death.

The two brothers responsible for Emmett's death were brought to justice and charged with his murder, but were quickly acquitted by an all-white jury angry with the national attention and the threat to the Southern way of life that the questioning caused. The two men escaped punishment but were ostracized from their community. Emmett's body had returned to Chicago, where the casket was opened and pictures taken of his brutally disfigured body, before being published in the press. African American leaders throughout the United States organized demonstrations and inspired a movement to fight for justice for all African Americans. 

Emmett's murder eventually led to massive cultural changes in the United States, a process that continues to this day.