Title
Author
Year
Length
Ebook available?
Audiobook
available?
Executive
Summary
Cautions/
Warnings
Features
Illustrations
Key Structures
Key Themes
Vocabulary
Getting Away with Murder: the True Story of the Emmett Till Case
Chris Crowe
2003
128 p. (text runs from p. 11 to p. 121)
Yes – we own a single-user ebook copy
Yes – we own CD version
A 14-year-old African American boy was brutally murdered in 1955 after
whistling at a white woman. The subsequent trial of the white men who
committed the crime, and who were found innocent, put a spotlight on the
“Jim Crow” ways of the South and became a catalyst for the Civil Rights
movement.
Three uses of the n-word; a few other profanities; these are used when
quoting people’s exact words. Potentially disturbing descriptions of the
beating and murder of Till. Disturbing photo of an unrecognizable Till in his
coffin.
Timeline of Civil Rights events and details of the Till case; bibliography; list
of additional resources including websites and artistic works (plays, poetry,
songs, novels); list for further reading.
Map of Mississippi with key locations marked; black and white period
photographs and photographs of the places and people under discussion every
few pages
Timeline (sequence of events); Cause and Effect (how this case spurred the
Civil Rights movement); Procedural (how a trial works); Compare & Contrast
(racial attitudes and situation in North vs. South, federal government position
vs. southern state government position, local press vs. national press
reactions, life today vs. life in Till’s time)
Role of the free press in society; formation and purpose of civil rights
movement and organizations like NAACP; origins and effects of racism &
prejudice; North vs. South conflict; Jim Crow laws & race-based taboos; how
a tragedy can sometimes lead to significant changes; pros and cons of jury
trial system; how we know what we know of history
Civil rights, integration, bus boycott, catalyst, sharecropper, NAACP,
segregation, desegregation, defendant, prosecution, indictment, taboo, white
supremacist, Jim Crow laws
1
Introduction Summary:
(pp. 11-14 –
 Author’s stated purpose for writing is to make sure all Americans know about
3 pages)
the Emmett Till case, which he feels has not received enough attention in
history education, and to demonstrate its impact on the development of the
Civil Rights movement.
Vocabulary:
 civil rights
 integration
 sham
 brazen
Illustrations:
 map of Mississippi with some key locations marked
Questions:
 Who was Emmett Till and what happened to him to make him the subject of
this book?
 What events brought the Emmett Till case to the author’s attention?
 Why did the author write this book? Why does he think people should read
it?
 Why is the murder of Emmett Till an important thing to know about,
according to the author?
 What was the result of the trial of the accused murderers?
 What is the author’s opinion of the fairness of the trial and how can you tell?
 Why does the book start with a map of the state of Mississippi?
Interesting Topics:
 Author’s purpose (making readers aware of the role this case played in the
civil rights movement)
 Author’s bias (clearly sympathetic with the victim and calls the trial a sham)
 Cause & effect (outrage at the murder and the sham trial launched a
movement to combat racism in America)
 Author’s craft (Q: why reveal the fact of the murder, the guilt of the accused,
and the result of the trial in the introduction? A: because this is not an
entertaining fictional murder mystery, this is a horrifying real-life tragedy;
however, the mystery that has yet to be revealed is how the murderers were
found innocent, and yet how we know for sure that they were guilty – this is
the suspenseful part of the story.)
Further Research:
 Brown v. Board of Education school integration ruling
 Montgomery bus boycott
2
Chapter 1 – Summary:
The Boy
 An overview of the Till case and the aftermath. Starts with a dramatization of
Who
the night of the murder, compiled from witness testimony. Press and civil
Triggered
rights organizations react in outrage. The South is already facing criticism on
the Civil
its reluctance to integrate schools. Editorials in southern papers complain that
Rights
the whole South is being criticized for an isolated incident or that the media
Movement
coverage is a plot against the South. The week-long trial was witnessed by
(pp. 15-26 –
many and covered intensely by the press. The fact that the white attackers were
10 pages)
even brought to trial was remarkable in a state where over 500 lynchings had
taken place since 1880. Despite strong witness testimony against the killers,
the all-white jury found the defendants not guilty. The verdict seemed to signal
that Jim Crow and segregation were not going to go away. However, it spurred
the Civil Rights movement forward in a way no other event had done before.
Vocabulary:
 catalyst
 sympathetic whites
 sharecropper
 oblivious
 grisly
 lynching
Illustrations:
 Scene of the kidnapping: the home of Mose Wright, Emmett Till’s great-uncle
 Crowd at Till’s funeral in Chicago
 Courtroom drawing of the trial – Mose Wright points to accused murderers
 Congressman Charles Diggs at the trial
Questions:
 The author wasn’t around to witness any of the events first-hand. How do we
know the events told on pp. 15-18 are true?
 By the end of the recreation of Till’s abduction on p. 18, what do we know
about the following people: Emmett Till, Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam, Mose
Wright?
 What unusual feature about Till’s funeral helped create a sense of outrage?
 How did the press help spread the sense of outrage from Chicago across the
nation?
 What did the Supreme Court school integration rulings of 1954 and 1955 have
to do with the racial situation in the South at the time of Till’s murder?
 How did white southerners react to national press coverage of the murder?
 What (if any) is the difference between a “lynching” and a “murder”?
 The word “spotlight” is used twice on p. 21 – how is it used and what is it
referring to?
 What aspects of the trial were fascinating to the rest of the nation? Why was it
a big deal that there was television coverage?
 What “time-honored customs” and “way of life” were being threatened in the
South, and what was threatening it?
3
 How did the “not guilty” verdict of the two clearly guilty murderers seem like
a victory to both sides?
 How did the murder, the trial and/or the verdict launch the modern civil rights
movement? What evidence of this does the author provide?
 By the end of chapter 1, we know a lot about the Till case. What key things do
we not yet know?
Interesting Topics:
 Author’s craft (why start the chapter with a recreation of the night Till was
taken from his uncle’s home? Why start the book with what is essentially a
summary of the rest of the book? What key details does the author exclude that
leave a sense of mystery yet to be revealed?)
 Compare & Contrast (local media vs. national media; Northern vs. Southern
attitudes; “sympathetic” whites vs. racist whites)
 Cause & Effect (how the murder, trial and verdict helped spur the civil rights
movement)
Further Research:
 NAACP
 Jim Crow laws
4
Chapter 2 – Summary:
Kicking the
 Compares life for Northern Blacks with that of Southern Blacks. Emphasizes
Hornet’s
that Till, a young teenager from Chicago, enjoyed a quality of life that was
Nest (pp.
better than that in the south. Describes how the south reacted to the recent
27-36 – 9
Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling. Steps inside and
pages)
outside the government took place to keep desegregation from happening in
Mississippi and other southern states. Focuses on the speeches & writings of
Judge Tom Brady, which predicted the destruction of the southern way of life
if integration took place, called integration a Communist/ Socialist plot, and in
warned about a hypothetical “young negro schoolboy … who has sojourned in
Chicago” and who would inevitably make “a vile overture or assault upon
some white girl.” This quote in particular seems to foreshadow what happened
with Till. Brady’s writings and that of others stirred up fear and hatred. Two
months before Till arrived in Mississippi, the Supreme Court mandated
desegregation take place with “all deliberate speed.” This prompted protests
and intensified efforts to keep Blacks from voting or running businesses, as
well as violence against Blacks. Till stepped into a world that was very
different from what he knew in Chicago. A quote from his mother
demonstrates all that she feared he did not know: she told him how she thought
he should behave around Southern whites, but “he didn’t know how to be
humble to white people” and “thought that was the silliest thing he’d ever
heard.” When two southern whites who shared Brady’s racist attitudes
witnessed Till, a brash young Black teenager from Chicago, violating a
southern taboo, it lead to his murder.
Vocabulary:
 catalyst
 segregation
 desegregation
 integration
 taboo
Illustrations:
 African American girl doing farm work in Mississippi
 African American mother and daughter on the Supreme Court steps holding
newspaper with headline about the ban on school segregation
 White high school student holds sign reading “We won’t go to school with
negroes.”
 White men watch black man painting “Waiting room for colored only” signs
for use in Jackson, Mississippi
Questions:
 Around the time of Till’s murder, what was life like for African Americans in
Chicago? How did it compare to that in the South?
 What major, national events related to racial issues were taking place around
the time of Till’s murder?
 How did Southern state governments, many white-owned businesses and many
white citizens react to the Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal to have
5
segregated public schools?
 Who was Tom P. Brady? What is the author trying to prove by quoting Brady
so much in this chapter? What quote is particularly appropriate as it pertains to
what would later happen to Emmett Till?
 Who was Lamar Smith and why is he included in this book?
 What “basic liberties” were racist whites afraid would be “destroyed” by “rigid
laws” such as the school desegregation ruling?
 There were plenty of official laws about segregation in the South, but there
were also unwritten rules, customs, and taboos. What unwritten rules was
Emmett Till’s mother concerned he would not follow?
 What do we know about Emmett Till after reading this chapter?
 What major facts about the case are still unknown to the reader at the end of
the chapter, and how does the author use this lack of information at the end of
the chapter?
Interesting Topics:
 Compare & Contrast (North vs. South – racial attitudes; written laws vs.
unwritten customs or taboos – how each would be communicated and dealt
with should they be violated)
 Cause & Effect (how southern governments, press, and white citizens
responded to the school desegregation ruling)
 Author’s craft (why so much time spent with Tom Brady in this chapter; how
suspense is once again built at the end of the chapter)
Further Research:
 Supreme Court school integration rulings – 1954 & 1955
 White Citizens’ Council
 Ku Klux Klan
 Lamar Smith
6
Chapter 3 – Summary:
The Boy
 Till’s brief life is set against the context of history. Till’s childhood in and near
from
Chicago was in a lower-middle class family. Chicago’s sizable and growing
Chicago
black population meant there were businesses employing blacks and catering
(pp. 37-49 –
to them in a way that was not happening in the south. Till had a sense of
12 pages)
humor and an easygoing personality, and had a close relationship with his
mother. He enjoyed earning money by doing chores for others. The Brown
decision that had so rocked the south was hardly noticed by Till. In the spring
of 1955, Till’s uncle Mose Wright came to visit from Mississippi and that’s
when Till decided he wanted to spend the summer there. Wright insisted
conditions in the south had never been better for blacks. Till’s mother worried
that he would not “know how to treat white people” and warned him, “If you
have to get on your knees and bow when a white person goes past, do it
willingly.” Till and his cousin Curtis Jones left for Money, Miss. in August
1955. It was a tiny rural community, nothing like Chicago – the residents
were poor, blacks worked for white sharecroppers, and blacks were routinely
punished for violating Jim Crow laws. Till’s arrival brought excitement to the
town – his southern cousins and their friends were spellbound by his “lack of
fear of white people” and his talk of “white girlfriends, the forbidden fruit.”
Till exaggerated these tales and furnished magazine photos of white women to
prove that in the north, “black boys could have white girlfriends without any
trouble.” He was treated like a celebrity and was having a great time, until
August 24 when he crossed a boundary he never really understood.
Vocabulary:
 Sharecropper
 Cotton gin
 Jim Crow
 Gullible
 Forbidden fruit
Illustrations:
 General photo of downtown Chicago in 1953
 Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley
 The first McDonald’s restaurant , 1955
 Emmett Till in a hat and tie in 1954
Questions:
 Of the events that are listed on p. 37 that took place in America during Emmett
Till’s 14 years of life, which ones do you recognize as having an influence
today?
 Why don’t we hear much about Till’s father in this book?
 What was Emmett’s life like in Chicago?
 What was Chicago like at the time of Emmett’s life?
 Why does the author spend two long paragraphs discussing the White Sox?
 Describe Emmett’s personality in one sentence, and then find quotes from this
chapter to support your statement.
7
 How did the Supreme Court’s decisions on school desegregation affect
Emmett’s life?
 Why did Emmett want to visit Mississippi in the summer of 1955?
 What about the Mississippi trip worried Emmett’s mother?
 What advice did Emmett’s mother give him about how to behave around white
people in Mississippi?
 Describe the town of Money, Mississippi. Compare it with the parts of
Chicago Till knew.
 Why was Emmett so fascinating to his Southern cousins and their friends?
 How did Emmett portray the relationship between blacks and whites in the
North for his Southern audience?
 Why would a white girlfriend be considered “forbidden fruit”?
Interesting Topics:
 Compare & Contrast (life in Chicago vs. rural Mississippi; life in 1955 vs.
now)
 Author’s craft (How does the author make 1955 seem both a little alien and
somewhat familiar to a modern audience? How does the author create
suspense at the end of this chapter?)
Further Research:
 The decade of the 1950s
 The Great Migration
 Baseball’s “color barrier”
8
Chapter 4 – Summary:
The Wolf
 Till was dared to enter Bryant’s Grocery & Meat and ask Carolyn Bryant out
Whistle (pp.
on a date. Carolyn was a young married white mother of two. Till either forgot
50-69 – 19
or ignored his mother’s warnings and broke one of the south’s biggest taboos:
pages)
the mixing of races, particularly a black man and a white woman. Testimony
from those inside the store, including Carolyn, states that Till grabbed her
hand and asked her for a date, then tried to stop her when she fled to her
apartment at the back of the store, saying she didn’t need to be afraid and that
he’d “been with white women before.” Till’s friends came into the store and
pulled him out; he said “Bye, baby,” as they did so. It is hard to know how
much of that testimony is accurate. Carolyn exited the store to get a gun from
her car and Till whistled at her (though others testified that he was whistling to
clear his stutter, or in response to a question about how he liked her). The story
got around quickly, and three days later Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant
returned home from a trip. He was furious at what he had heard. Carolyn
begged him to forget about it. Blacks and whites alike assumed some kid of
retaliation against Till would be forthcoming. Bryant and his half-brother J.W.
Milam drove to Mose Wright’s house and hauled Till off at 2:30 in the
morning. Till was beaten and killed, and his body was thrown in a river. Till’s
relatives at Mose Wright’s home were frantic with worry. They’d been
threatened to not call the police, but eventually they did. They also informed
Till’s mother that he was missing. She asked Chicago police to put pressure on
those in Mississippi, and she called every newspaper she could think of.
Bryant and Milam were arrested for kidnapping. They insisted that they’d let
him go alive. Till’s mutilated and bloated body was found in the river three
days later. The kidnappers were charged with murder. A plan to quickly bury
Till’s body there in Mississippi was changed at the last minute and the casket
was shipped to Chicago. Till’s mother couldn’t recognize the body because it
was in such bad shape and had to search it for clues to verify its identity. She
requested an open-casket funeral so people could “see what they did to my
boy.” The press ran photos of the disfigured body and accounts of the effects it
had on those viewing it. Bryant and Milam were charged with murder.
Vocabulary:
 Indicted
 Unprecedented
Illustrations:
 Bryant’s store in Money, Mississippi
 Carolyn Bryant
 Mose Wright
 J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant
 Emmett Till’s mother overcome with grief
 Photo of Till’s corpse that was published in The Chicago Defender
Questions:
 Why were Emmett Till and his cousins at Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market on
the evening of Wednesday, August 24th?
9
 Who was Carolyn Bryant?
 Why was Emmett dared to go into the store and ask Carolyn Bryant on a date?
Why was this such a “daring” thing to do?
 Who was the only witness to what happened inside the store, and what was her
version of the events?
 What happened out on the street after Emmett left the store?
 According to the author, “everyone who had heard about the encounter
between Emmett Till and Carolyn Bryant expected some sort of retaliation
against Emmett.” What kept Carolyn’s husband Roy from retaliating until
August 28th?
 Who helped Roy Bryant with the abduction of Emmett Till?
 How do we know what happened between the time Emmett was taken from
Mose Wright’s home at gunpoint and his murder?
 Why didn’t Mose Wright call the sheriff after Emmett had been taken from his
house?
 How did Emmett’s mother, back in Chicago, react to his kidnapping and
disappearance? How did she put pressure on the sheriff way down in
Mississippi?
 When they were arrested, what story did Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam give to
the sheriff?
 What happened on August 31 that made the case something other than a
kidnapping case?
 How was Emmett’s mangled body eventually identified?
 How did Till’s mother manage to get his body sent to Chicago? Why was it
important to her and how did it end up being important to the case?
 How did the press cover the Emmett Till murder and funeral?
 Why was the indictment of Bryant and Milam considered so unusual?
Interesting Topics:
 Author’s craft (combining different sources of evidence to create a more
complete picture; pointing out parts of the story where only one possibly
untrustworthy witness was available)
Further Research:
 Find news articles from various sources from the time of the murder and the
trial
10
Chapter 5 – Summary:
Setting the
 Covers preparations for the trial and the first part of the trial up through jury
Stage (pp.
selection. Public pressure from the NAACP and Till’s mother through the
70-83 – 13
national media resulted in local authorities and southern citizens becoming
pages)
defensive of their way of life and resentful of outside pressure, even though
most white residents loathed siding with two unpopular “rednecks” who had
“overstepped their white authority”. The local sheriff told press that the body
wasn’t Till’s and that Till was probably still alive. Defense lawyers’ strategy
was to find a legal way for the white jurors to declare the killers innocent, and
to present the accused killers as “patriots” with good reputations. Prosecution
was handled by the state’s District Attorney General and with a reputedly fair
judge. Courtroom had typical Jim Crow restrictions on where blacks could sit
and how many could be in the room. As jury selection began, the prosecution
opted to not seek the death penalty, with the hopes that would help with jury
selection. The pool of jurors contained only whites because only registered
voters could be jurors and there were no registered black voters in the county.
Defense relied on the sheriff’s personal knowledge of the potential jurors
during selection. Prosecution looked for jurors who were not personal friends
of the defendants. Defense was able to get an additional day to round three
additional witnesses, and the evidence and testimony portion of the case could
proceed.
Vocabulary:
 Evidence
 Testimony
 Witness
 Jury
 Prosecution
 Defense
Illustrations:
 Milam and Bryant at the trial
 The Tallahatchie County courthouse
 Milam and Bryant with their young sons at the trial
 Attorneys at the trial
 Sheriff Strider addressing the jury at the trial
Questions:
 Describe how the following groups or individuals reacted to the murder
charges: the NAACP; Mamie Till Bradley; the White Citizens’ Council;
Mississippi Governor Hugh White.
 How did the opinion of local authorities toward prosecuting Bryant and Milam
change, and why?
 Name and describe the major people involved on the side of the prosecution.
Name and describe the major people involved on the side of the defense.
 Why was the defense’s “victory assured even before the trial began”?
 How did the defense use pre-trial publicity to ensure this “victory”?
11
 What factors made the trial as fair as it could be?
 Describe what it was like in the courthouse on the first day of the trial.
 Why did the prosecution choose to not seek the death penalty?
 Why were there no black men on the jury?
 How did the defense select jurors who would “play along” with them?
 What questions did the prosecution ask in order to screen jurors?
 What kind of press coverage was allowed during the trial?
 When the prosecution was given an extra day to round up witnesses, why were
they never able to find Leroy Collins and Henry Lee Loggins? Who did they
round up instead?
Interesting Topics:
 Procedural (how is a jury selected; what is the difference between testimony
and evidence)
Further Research:
 Jury trial
12
Chapter 6 – Summary:
Getting
 Description of the trial and its outcome. Judge Swango, while allowing some
Away with
illogical and legally inconsistent things to happen, conducted the trial in a way
Murder
that earned him respect from both sides. State called Mose Wright, who
(pp. 84-106
identified the two killers, and maintained his testimony during cross– 22 pages)
examination. State called the sheriff, who said that Bryant told him he’d
picked up Till but let him go since “he wasn’t the right one.” State called two
undertakers who described the condition of the body found. Till’s mother was
questioned about her ability to identify the body. Eyewitness Willie Reed
testified that he’d seen men take Till into a barn on Milam’s brother’s farm and
heard screaming. Defense got him to admit he had not seen Milam and that he
didn’t know how far away he was from the truck. Two more eyewitnesses
were questioned, as well as two other sheriffs who reported that Bryant and
Milam had confessed to the abduction. Defense had Carolyn Bryant testify
about her encounter with Till at the store, but this was told without the jury
being present. Defense called another sheriff who testified that the body had
likely been in the river for 10-20 days and was impossible to identify. More
experts backed up that angle. Five character witnesses testified on behalf of
the accused killers. Prosecution closed by reminding jurors that this was a
case of murder of a child by two grown men. The defense stated that putting a
corpse in a river was a possible plot of those who wanted to destroy the south’s
way of life and that “every last Anglo-Saxon one of you men in this jury”
should set the accused free. The identification of the body and the
identification of the killers were both questioned. An hour later, the jury found
the accused not guilty.
Vocabulary:
 Deliberation
 Reasonable doubt
 Credibility
 Cross-examination
Illustrations:
 White spectators at the trial
 Mose Wright pointing at the trial
 Emmett Till’s ring, found on the body
 Witness Willie Reed and prosecuting attorney Gerald Chatham
 Building where the beating occurred
 Deputy with the heavy fan used to weigh down Emmett’s body in the river
 Milam and Bryant with their attorney
 Milam, Bryant and their wives celebrating after the “not guilty” verdict
Questions:
 The title of this chapter is “Getting Away with Murder.” It’s also the title of
the book. What does that tell you about this chapter?
 What information did Mose Wright’s testimony provide?
 What do we learn about Mose Wright’s character in this chapter?
13
 What was Sheriff Smith’s version of the events?
 What information did Mamie Till Bradley’s testimony provide?
 What do we learn about Mamie Till Bradley’s character in this chapter?
 What information did Willie Reed’s testimony provide? How did the defense
attack this testimony and discredit it?
 How did the testimony of Carolyn Bryant help sway the white audience? Why
did the testimony have no effect on the jury?
 What was the main strategy of the defense?
 The defense of the killers was based mostly on the assertion that the body
found could not be identified as Till’s. How did the technology at the time
limit the ability of law enforcement to prove such things?
 What was the point of the testimony of the character witnesses for the defense?
 During closing arguments, what was John Whitten’s theory about why all of
this happened?
 What threat did Sheriff Strider make after the trial? How does this threat
contradict the entire defense strategy?
 What was the point of including the Greenwood Commonwealth article at the
end of this chapter? Who were the plantation workers mentioned in the last
sentence of the article?
Interesting Topics:
 Procedural (procedures of a trial – prosecution, defense, cross-examination,
dismissing the jury for part of the testimony, closing arguments,
deliberation)
14
Chapter 7 – Summary:
Aftershocks
 The outcome of the Till case sparked intense and sympathetic reactions by the
(pp. 107NAACP and national media, putting a spotlight on something that had been
121 – 14
somewhat hidden from the nation. Many young blacks felt fearful for their
pages)
lives and this inspired them to stand up to racism. Politicians, the NAACP,
civil rights workers, church leaders, and ordinary people were joined together
by the catalyst of Till’s murder and the unfair outcome of the trial. Rosa Parks
was one such person and her bus boycott began just a few months later. The
killers, having been found innocent, were free to sell their story to a magazine
and confessed to the kidnapping, beating and murder of Till in front of the
whole nation. Though they couldn’t be tried for the same crime again, they
were ostracized from their community. The interview was another civil rights
catalyst. While the killers died in obscurity and shame, Till’s mother became a
teacher and continued to speak on behalf of civil rights. The lesson she so
painfully learned is one she hopes everyone learns: that “what happens to any
of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”
Vocabulary:
 Catalyst
 Indignity
 Galvanize
 Symbol
Illustrations:
 Medgar Evers of the NAACP
 Emmett’s mother surrounded by reporters at the trial
 Rosa Parks riding on a city bus in Montgomery after the bus boycott
 Milam and Bryant outside the courthouse
 Witnesses from the trial, including Mose Wright and Willie Reed
 Emmett’s mother in 1995, 40 years after his murder
Questions:
 How did the press react to the verdict?
 How did civil rights groups like the NAACP react?
 How did the trial’s outcome affect many African Americans?
 Who were Anne Moody, Joyce Ladner, and Rosa Parks, and how did the
Emmett Till case end up being important to them?
 The photograph of Emmett in the coffin is described as a “symbol” – what did
it symbolize, according to Ladner?
 Re-write this sentence in your own words: “The trial of Emmett’s killers was
the necessary and final catalyst for a united effort against racial discrimination
in America.”
 Why were Bryant and Milam sent back to jail briefly after the trial?
 After being found not guilty, three months later the killers admitted they
committed the crime in a magazine interview that was published for the entire
nation to read. What was their motivation for doing the interview? Why were
they not arrested and put in jail after confessing to the murder? Is all of the
15
information in their interview necessarily accurate?
 How did the killers make it seem like Emmett was to blame for his own
murder? What did Milam mean when he called Emmett “hopeless”?
 How were the killers treated in their community after the magazine interview?
What was their ultimate fate?
 What reactions did the confessional article cause among African Americans
and everyone interested in civil rights?
 What happened to the black witnesses after the trial?
 What was the “painful” and “long-lasting” lesson learned by Emmett’s mother,
according to the author?
Interesting Topics:
 Procedural (why were Bryant and Milam allowed to stay free after confessing
to murder – because they had already been found innocent and could not be
tried twice for the same crime)
 Cause and Effect (how the murder, the apparently unjust outcome of the trial,
and then the definite knowledge of the injustice of the trial after the interview,
all helped galvanize the civil rights movement into action)
Further Research:
 Rosa Parks
 Medgar Evers
 Mamie Till Bradley
General Questions:
 How would the murder and/or trial have been different if it had taken place today,
purely in terms of the technology available? Think about forensic science and
about communication technology (internet, cell phones, cameras, etc.).
 How does this case compare with a recent case with similar aspects (Treyvon
Martin’s death)?
 Describe some other historical events where a significant tragedy eventually led
to a positive change.
 What factors, customs, situations, laws, etc. ultimately allowed Bryant and Milam
to “get away with murder”? Which of these have changed significantly since that
time?
Further Reading
Fiction:
Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe. The same author who wrote Getting Away with
Murder presents the story in a historical fiction young adult novel.
A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson. An illustrated poetry collection celebrating
Emmett’s life and mourning his death.
Non-Fiction:
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Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America by Mamie Till
(Bradley) Mobley. Completed in 2003 just before her death, Emmett Till’s mother tells
the story of Emmett’s murder and the trial, and how she used this loss to help inspire the
civil rights movement.
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