Ghost Boys
Jewell Parker Rhodes
Ghost Boys
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Table of Contents
O V ERV IEW
3
C H A P TER S UM M A RIES & A N A LYS ES
5
Prologue-Page 80
5
Pages 85-132
10
Pages 133-186
14
Page 187-Afterword
20
C H A RA C TER A N A LYS IS
23
Jerome Rogers
23
Emmett Till
23
Sarah Moore
24
Carlos Rodríquez
24
Officer Moore
24
Grandma Rogers
25
Kim Rogers
25
Trayvon Martin
25
Eddie, Snap, and Mike
25
Mr. and Mrs. Rogers
26
Mr. Rodríquez (Papi)
26
27
TH EM ES
Black Lives Matter
27
Saying Their Names: Testimony and Witnessing in Black Culture and Literature
28
The Nature of Black Childhood in America
29
32
S YM B O LS & M O TIFS
The Toy Gun
32
Haunting and Ghosts
32
Carlos’s Drawings
33
Sarah’s Website
33
Peter Pan
33
Emmett Till’s White Hat
34
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34
Sarah’s Bedroom
IM P O RTA N T Q UO TES
35
ES S A Y TO P IC S
42
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Overview
Ghost Boys is a middle-grade novel by Jewell Parker Rhodes, an award-winning writer on the
Black experience. Set in contemporary Chicago, the novel is a first-person narrative about the
life and death of 12-year-old Jerome Rogers, a boy Officer Moore kills one afternoon as
Jerome plays with a toy gun near his neighborhood. A popular and critical success that taps
into the modern civil rights movement that is Black Lives Matter, this novel is a 2019 National
Council of Teachers of English Charlotte Huck Honor Award for Outstanding Children’s Fiction
winner and a 2018-2019 National Education Association Read Across America selection.
This guide is based on the 2018 Little, Brown & Company print edition.
Plot Summary
Jerome is an ordinary seventh-grader attempting to navigate the many dangers of growing up
in contemporary Chicago. Although Jerome has a loving relationship with his Southern
grandmother, his sister Kim, and hardworking parents, life outside home is scary. The eight
blocks between home and Jerome’s school are unsafe because of drug dealers and the threat
of the police, who harass and profile Black people, especially men and boys. School is also
unsafe because Jerome is the regular victim of three bullies—Eddie, Snap, and Mike—who
sometimes greet him at the door when he arrives at school and beat him up at lunch.
Jerome’s approach to managing these challenges is to remain as invisible as possible.
Jerome abandons this strategy of remaining invisible when Carlos, a transplant from San
Antonio, Texas, arrives one day. Jerome answers the call to help the new kid, and Jerome
does exactly that by teaching Carlos how to hide from bullies by eating lunch in the bathroom.
Unfortunately, the bullies discover the boys in their bathroom hideout. Although Jerome is
accustomed to accepting the beatings the bullies deliver, Carlos responds by pulling what
appears to be a gun to defend himself and Jerome. After the altercation ends, Carlos reveals
that the gun is a toy one. After school that day, Carlos insists that Jerome take the toy gun,
despite Kim’s misgivings.
Those misgivings turn out to be prophetic. Jerome is playing a pretend game of good guys
and bad guys one day near his neighborhood when someone makes a 911 call about a boy
with a gun. The dispatcher who forwards the call to the police fails to mention that the gun is
a toy. When the officers arrive on the scene, one of them, Officer Moore, shoots and kills
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Jerome without ever rendering first aid as the young boy dies. In the aftermath, the legal
system finds in a preliminary hearing that there is not enough evidence to take the case to
trial because the officer involved claims he was in fear for his life when he shot Jerome.
Rather than moving on, Jerome endures as a ghost who discovers a tragic brotherhood of
murdered Black boys who include Emmett Till. His death by lynching in Mississippi as well as
his mother’s decision to expose her grief and his damaged body to the world during his
funeral galvanized civil rights work in the 1950s. Emmett’s ghost teaches Jerome about the
importance of witnessing and helping the living to tell the stories of their own grief and their
murdered loved ones.
In that spirit, Jerome haunts Sarah Moore, the daughter of the officer who killed Jerome, until
she reconciles with her father and begins a website to tell the stories of the murdered Black
boys and men. Jerome breaks through to Carlos as well, who eventually gathers the courage
to tell Jerome’s grandmother that he was the one who gave the gun to Jerome. The novel
closes with a moving Day of the Dead celebration in which Jerome and Carlos’s families
celebrate Jerome’s memory.
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Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue-Page 80
“Dead,” Prologue Summary
Jerome Rogers, a new ghost, looks down at his body in the field where a police officer killed
him as he played with a toy gun. His mother rushes to the scene, and the police officer stares
at the little boy, apparently surprised that he is so young. Jerome notes with dismay that his
body sits in the field many hours after the police have killed him. Crowds gather, and people
begin to snap pictures and post videos. His killing has gone viral, and Jerome is surprised to
discover that after 12 years as an invisible Black boy, he is now famous.
“Dead,” Page 5 Summary: “Chicago Tribune: OFFICER: ‘I HAD NO CHOICE!’”
The news story on his killing is brief, with the officer claiming he “had no choice” but to kill
Jerome because Jerome had a gun (5).
“Alive,” Pages 9-16 Summary: “December 8: Morning”
The novel flashes back to a pivotal morning leading up to Jerome’s death. It was a typical
morning, one in which Mrs. Rogers insisted that Jerome come home immediately after school,
told his grandmother three good things to reassure her before he braved the walk to school
with his little sister Kim, and thought about his dreams of being a famous athlete or of going
to college (his family’s dream for him).
The walk to school is dangerous. It takes Jerome and Kim past Green Acres, a housing project
where drug dealing takes place openly. School is also dangerous. Three bullies—Eddie, Snap,
and Mike—are as usual waiting at the schoolhouse door to terrorize Jerome, who decides to
dodge them at lunch by eating in the rest room.
“Dead,” Pages 21-26 Summary: “Ghost”
Back in the present, the Rogers family has gathered in the apartment to mourn and express
their anger at the killing. Jerome has the uncomfortable experience of people walking through
him because they cannot see him, and he watches his sister withdraw into a book. Different
people respond consciously and unconsciously to his spirit—the minister sidles past him
without seeing the ghost, while Grandma seems aware that something is there, despite her
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family’s scoffing at her insistence that her grandson has not yet moved on. As the Rogers
grieve, they grow angry. Jerome has now joined Emmett Till and Tamir Rice, two boys killed
senselessly decades apart, and the family members, especially Pop (Jerome’s father), begin
talking about this history. Jerome feels great pain as he watches his family’s anger and grief.
A ghost—another Black boy like Jerome and whose identity is later revealed as Emmett Till—
calls to Jerome, telling him that it is “[t]ime to wake up” (25). Jerome follows him.
“Dead,” Pages 27-31 Summary: “Church”
On subsequent days, Jerome watches helplessly as his family members struggle with their
anger and grief. Jerome knows he is a ghost, but he has no idea of where he is supposed to
go. Out of all the Rogers, Grandma is the one who seems to be aware that Jerome is haunting
their apartment.
The day of Jerome’s funeral arrives. Like Mamie Till, Emmett Till’s mother, Mrs. Rogers insists
that his casket be open so the world can see what her son’s killer did. As the family enters the
church, Carlos, a boy who identifies himself as a school friend of Jerome’s, gives a picture to
Grandma Rogers, who smiles, much to Jerome’s puzzlement.
As the funeral begins, the fellow ghost Jerome saw previously arrives again and tells Jerome
that it is best not to watch the service because it is unsettling to see yourself in a casket.
“Alive,” Pages 35-44 Summary: “December 8: School”
Back on December 8, Jerome decides to break his usual commitment to invisibility by
agreeing to be the buddy for Carlos, a new student from San Antonio, Texas. Jerome leads
Carlos to the school bathroom during lunch so they can avoid bullies.
During lunch, Carlos asks if Jerome will be his friend and ally. Jerome knows that having
friends can be good—it means you are not alone—but being a friend might also mean getting
into fights to defend your friend. Carlos’s loneliness is so obvious that Jerome agrees to be
his friend. This alliance immediately leads to trouble. Eddie, Mike, and Snap burst into the
bathroom to bully the two boys. When the three boys attack Carlos, Jerome stands up to
them for the first time ever by threatening to tell on them. Carlos goes even further by pulling
out a gun.
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“Dead,” Pages 49-53 Summary: “Preliminary Hearing: Chicago Courthouse”
Four months after his death, Jerome haunts the courtroom at the preliminary hearing that will
determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial. The Rogers family and the family of
Officer Moore, the officer who shot Jerome, are present. Officer Moore testifies that he felt he
was in danger when he shot Jerome, whom he describes as a large, threatening person
(despite Jerome’s age).
The courtroom erupts at this unbelievable description of Jerome. Mrs. Rogers cries and
others shout out that the lives of Black people and Jerome matter. This upsetting scene
becomes even more disturbing when Sarah Moore, the daughter of the officer who killed
Jerome, speaks directly to Jerome, revealing that she can see him.
“Alive,” Pages 57-59 Summary: “December 8: Gun”
Back at the confrontation with the bullies, Snap, Eddie, and Mike are frightened by the
appearance of the gun, but they leave with vague threats to get Jerome later. Eddie sneers at
Jerome’s sudden bravery. After the bullies leave, Carlos reveals that the gun is just a toy one
made from plastic. The two boys laugh from sheer relief.
“Dead,” Pages 63-70 Summary: “Sarah”
Jerome finds Sarah’s home, which is much nicer than the apartment where the Rogers live.
Jerome and Sarah talk. She tells him that she is sad and isolated since the shooting. Her
parents fight frequently, and Sarah is an outcast because of the attention around Jerome’s
death.
Sarah sees her father as the typical police officer, a person whose job it is to “protect and
serve” (65), but Jerome points out that this attitude does not extend to him, his neighborhood,
and other people of color. As Jerome looks around Sarah’s room, he notices that it is “like
cotton candy” (65), full of the things given to a girl who lives a sheltered life. She is sorry that
Jerome is dead and wants to help, but she doesn’t know how.
Officer Moore enters the room to say good night, but Sarah questions him about the shooting.
He explains that on the day he shot Jerome, he felt nervous because the neighborhood was a
high-crime one and because Jerome looked large and threatening to him. Sarah looks at
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Jerome’s ghost and points out that she and Jerome are the same height. Her insistence on
rejecting her father’s account angers Officer Moore, who leaves the room.
This conversation leaves Sarah feeling unsettled and Jerome angry. Sarah asks Jerome to be
friends with her, but the irony of having to die to have a friendship across racial lines is too
much for Jerome. He fades out of awareness for a minute, then comes back to find Sarah
crying about how difficult her life is. People are mean to her because of who her father is,
while others celebrate her for the same reason. She also feels fear: If Jerome, a boy her age
and size, can die as he did, she wonders if the same thing might happen to her. Jerome,
recalling the times his family gave him the so-called talk about how not to come to the
attention of law enforcement, tells her this is unlikely because she is a White girl. The chapter
ends with both of them laughing and musing over why they can see each other.
“Alive,” Pages 75-80 Summary: “December 8: School”
The rest of the day after the encounter in the bathroom with the bullies and the gun is a
confusing and exhausting one for Jerome. It feels good to have an ally and to have escaped a
beating, but Jerome knows the toy gun is part of everything his parents have insisted he
avoid. After school, Jerome accepts the toy gun from Carlos because he is intrigued by it and
hopes it might shield him from future beatings from the bullies. Kim sees this exchange and
looks on in disapproval and anger. Jerome knows she doesn’t approve, but with the realistic
toy gun in his pocket, he feels powerful and capable of defending himself. In the end, Kim and
Jerome come to a silent agreement that she will not say anything about the gun.
Prologue-Page 80 Analysis
Jewell Parker Rhodes sets the stage by introducing the important characters in the novel and
its context, the history of Black people’s responses to the killing of Black boys. Her innovation
is to use the point of view of the victim, 12-year-old Jerome, to tell the story. As a ghost,
Jerome is a limited omniscient narrator who uses his ghostliness to move among spaces and
characters to watch what happens after his death.
Parker Rhodes places the story of Jerome in the context of the killing of Black boys like
Emmett Till in the 1950s and Tamir Rice in the 2010s by having characters mention them by
name as they attempt to make sense of what is a senseless death. The deaths of these boys,
even a young boy like 12-year-old Rice, are almost always followed by media and law
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enforcement narratives that seek to cast these boys as inherently criminal and threatening.
The snippet from the Chicago Tribune news story, in which Jerome is described as having a
gun, is a representation of that narrative.
Parker Rhodes undercuts the idea that the Black child victim had to have done something
wrong by filling in the details of who Jerome was before his death. Jerome was a typical child
who struggled to escape bullies and was a good student torn between his parents’ desire for
him to go to college and his own hope to become a professional athlete. Parker Rhodes
chooses not to show Jerome’s killing in these early sections to focus on creating a threedimensional character who was loved by his family.
A frequent question that comes up every time one of these killings occurs is why the killing
happened. Parker Rhodes introduces the scene of the toy gun to hint at the scenario in the
news story—perhaps Jerome appeared to have a gun—but her decision both to withhold the
scene where the shooting occurs and her early introduction of Black Lives Matter as the
context for the story makes it clear that the reason has much more to do with racism and
racist stereotypes of Black people and children in particular. As a ghost, the innocent Jerome
now has the power and freedom—something he lacked in life—to help reveal to the reader the
chain of events that led to his death and the bigger forces that provide the context for that
death.
Jerome uses this newfound freedom of movement to cross a racial, class, and geographic
line between his life and that of Sarah Moore, the daughter of the police officer who killed
Jerome. Parker Rhodes’s commitment to going beyond stereotypes and simple narratives is
present in her sympathetic portrayal of Sarah. The description of Sarah’s pink room makes it
clear that race and class privilege have allowed Sarah to live an innocent childhood, while just
across the city Jerome has experienced the talk, one of the many rites of passage children
experience as Black parents attempt to give them the tools to survive systemic racism.
Parker’s decision to allow these two to talk and to compare these experiences is just one of
many ways that she deepens and humanizes the cast of characters we expect to find in a
story about the killing of a Black child. In subsequent sections of the novel, however, Parker
Rhodes goes beyond a simple feel-good moment of having the two talk and showing Sarah as
a victim by having these conversations serve as the basis for real change in the characters.
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Pages 85-132
“Dead,” Pages 85-87 Summary: “Preliminary Hearing: Chicago Courthouse: April 18”
The city’s prosecutor questions Officer Moore to establish that Jerome could not have been
all that threatening given his small size and to imply that perhaps the officer allowed
unconscious bias to influence his reactions. Jerome sees the other ghost boy again and
realizes that Sarah can also see the other ghost.
“Dead,” Pages 89-97 Summary: “Lost”
Later that day, Jerome confirms that Sarah can see the other ghost boy. Jerome grows angry
when he realizes Officer Moore is on paid leave, yet another confirmation that the privileged
life Sarah and her family lead is part of a “fantasy world” (90). The reality of the Rogers family
is one of poverty and scrambling when emergencies arise. The differences between their
childhoods and circumstances make Jerome angry, especially because he will never get to
escape his oppressive childhood by achieving his dream of becoming a professional athlete.
Jerome is looking at Sarah’s book collection (which includes Peter Pan, the fantasy story of a
White boy who never grows up) when the other ghost boy joins them. The ghost boy reveals
that he is Emmett Till and then chides Jerome for continuing to be angry at Sarah by pointing
out that Sarah can change. Emmett’s role is to help her and Jerome change. Emmett reveals
an almost countless number of murdered Black boys hovering just outside the window. Like
Peter Pan, they will never grow up. The sight saddens Sarah, while the idea that the murder of
a Black boy can occur blocks from a home in Chicago today or in the 1950s in the South
overwhelms Jerome to the point that he disappears again.
“Dead,” Pages 99-103 Summary: “Real”
In his in-between state, Jerome considers what is real and what is not. Reality should include
hitting milestones and growing up to get a job, although growing up to be the president or a
professional basketball player is “a fantasy” (99). When Jerome comes back, he is on the
church steps with Emmett, and the reality of being dead comes down on him hard.
Emmett shares his own dreams and reality with Jerome, and they realize that their dreams of
being professional athletes are similar. Chicago, Emmett’s hometown, is different because it
is more violent now than it was in the 1950s when Emmett lived there. Emmett tells Jerome
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that his mother, like Grandma Rogers, still required him to be careful outside the house. There
were other dangers and difficulties—polio, an illness that paralyzed children, was around in
the 1950s. Emmett shares that he has a speech impediment that made him whistle when he
attempted to pronounce words that started with “w.”
The mood shifts so much that it is clear to Jerome that Emmett wants to share his story.
Emmett insists that Jerome isn’t ready for this story, however. He tells Jerome that Sarah’s
ability to see Jerome means there is still a task Jerome must complete to help Sarah.
“Dead,” Pages 105-110 Summary: “Me & Sarah”
Jerome watches the drama unfolding around the preliminary hearing later that day. His family
is grieving and angry, while the judge shows almost no reaction to the proceedings. Outside
the courtroom, protestors hold signs and chant Black Lives Matter slogans, while the police,
some of them mounted, stand by as the national news captures it all. Protestors are also
outside Sarah’s home, where Jerome sits with her, and the two talk about Emmett’s belief that
the two children must help each other somehow.
During one of these conversations, Sarah decides to look at video of Jerome’s shooting. The
video is short and reveals that the two officers did nothing in the immediate aftermath of the
shooting. Jerome flashes back to the moments as he lay dying and when his spirit left his
body. Sarah’s reaction to the video forces Jerome to see that his death has left Sarah “forever
changed” (109). The change is that she recognizes that Jerome was in some way invisible to
a man like her father. Jerome responds to this important realization with anger when Sarah
shares it, but the hint of Emmett nearby (the smell of lilacs and the flutter of a curtain) causes
Jerome to feel shame and to wish that he and Sarah could comfort each other.
“Dead,” Pages 111-112 Summary: “Preliminary Hearing: Chicago Courthouse: April 18”
During her testimony, the 911 operator who took the call about a child playing with a toy gun
reveals that she never relayed the information that the gun was not real. The lawyer asks her
if she realizes this same mistake played a role in the death of Tamir Rice, another Black boy
killed by a police officer after playing with a toy gun. Jerome feels pity for the operator,
especially because he knows that passing on that the gun was a toy “wouldn’t have made any
difference” (112) to police officers accustomed to assuming Black boys are dangerous
criminals.
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“Dead,” Pages 113-117 Summary: “Civil Rights”
Free from the restrictions of the blocks around home and school, Jerome wanders anywhere
he wishes and learns how nice Sarah’s school is compared to his. Jerome winks into
existence while Sarah is in her school’s comfortable library, where the librarian has caught
Sarah skipping class. Sarah asks the librarian to help her find information about Emmett Till,
but the librarian is at first reluctant to provide information about Emmett’s violent death.
Sarah’s refusal to accept that she will learn about this history later—Sarah notes she has
gotten to the seventh grade without learning about Emmett—eventually convinces the
librarian to help Sarah find out more.
The librarian reveals that the decision of Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till, to show Emmett’s
brutalized body in an open casket made his death a catalyst for milestones of the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The librarian helps Sarah find a picture of the open
casket. The stunning picture brings Sarah to tears, but Jerome refuses to look at it because
“[d]ead is dead” (117). His own death makes him unwilling to see this truth.
“Dead,” Pages 119-120 Summary: “Wandering”
Jerome wanders around, unhappy at his in-between state. He hates being stuck, but he also
has mixed feelings about what will happen with the passage of time. He wants his family to
move on and not feel trapped in endless mourning for him, but he also doesn’t like the idea of
being forgotten. Emmett appears beside him, as does the ghost of Trayvon Martin, another
Black boy who became a ghost after a man murdered him in 2012. Jerome finally asks
Emmett the most important question. Why do people kill Black boys, cutting short their
boyhood? Peter Pan is not the only child who never grows up.
“Dead,” Pages 121-123 Summary: “Preliminary Hearing: Chicago Courthouse: April 18”
Officer Moore takes the stand again and reveals that he failed to announce himself, ask
Jerome to put down the gun, ask Jerome to raise his hands, bring the police cruiser to a stop
before shooting, perform CPR on Jerome, or call 911. His reactions during the shooting were
all conditioned on the idea that “[a] police car is a coffin” (122) for fearful police officers as
they go out on calls. The callousness of his inaction and actions cause the courtroom to
erupt. Jerome stands by helplessly as the cold reality of what Officer Moore did to him brings
grief to the Rogers family and Sarah. He disappears again.
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“Dead,” Pages 125-127 Summary: “Carlos”
Jerome observes life after his death by checking in on his family and Carlos. Grandma Rogers
walks Kim to school, and Carlos walks them both back home after school. Carlos serves as
welcome company for Kim and Grandma Rogers, who seem bowed down with their grief.
Carlos tells them about the beauty of San Antonio, his hometown, but assures them he never
wants to go back. Grandma Rogers grows to trust him so much that she eventually asks him
to watch over Kim by walking her home. Looking at Carlos, Jerome realizes that the smiling
face Carlos presents to Grandma is “false” (127), a cover for the sadness that “cloaks him”
(127) since Jerome died. Jerome realizes that in the right light, Carlos looks a little like him.
“Dead,” Pages 129-132 Summary: “Preliminary Hearing: Chicago Courthouse: April 19”
On the second day of the hearing, Officer Moore testifies again. The prosecutor gets Moore to
admit he shot Jerome in the back as he ran away from Moore. All Moore can do is repeat that
he feared for his life. Watching Moore, Jerome realizes for the first time that although it
seems unlikely that a man with a gun would be afraid of a 12-year-old, Moore is telling the
truth as he felt it in the moment he shot Jerome. Jerome doesn’t know what to do with this
insight.
Pages 85-132 Analysis
Parker Rhodes develops the relationship between Jerome and Sarah in this section. She also
develops the enduring and historical nature of the killing of Black boys by making Emmett Till
and his host of ghost boys play a larger role in the novel.
Sarah’s encounters with Jerome slowly force her to leave behind her innocence, a false
innocence that was built upon the privilege of never having to think about the role racism and
stereotyping play in society. Sarah realizes that she is ignorant. Her actions over the course
of these sections take her from ignorance to knowledge. Her recognition that she and Jerome
are about the same size gives her a counternarrative to question her father’s defense that he
was in fear of his life. Her access to a kind librarian enables her to move from ignorance of the
long history of the killing of Black boys to a greater knowledge of how frequently Black boys
and children have been cast as criminals when adults kill them. Her research on the death of
Emmett Till drives this point home. Her movement from ignorance to knowledge also gives
her a voice to ask her father the uncomfortable question of why her father would have been
afraid of a mere boy.
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Jerome also moves from ignorance to knowledge. His increasing knowledge happens in the
context of encounters with Sarah—he learns how sheltered she is and how different this
privilege makes his life from hers. Being a ghost, however, gives him a chance to see the big
picture surrounding his death. The presence of an army of ghost boys drives home the
unwelcome truth that deaths like Jerome’s have happened repeatedly. Jerome also comes to
understand the idea of unconscious bias—that people might act on stereotypes or prejudice
that are so deeply held that the people holding them are not even aware that they have the
beliefs. Police officers are in a situation in which their unconscious bias is coupled with the
ability to deliver life and death—a dangerous combination. Jerome is uncomfortable with this
knowledge.
Despite his unhappiness about his more nuanced understanding of how Officer Moore came
to kill him, Jerome still has a task to complete. The beginning of his ability to recognize what
this task is comes as Jerome learns more about the story of Emmett Till. Although many
readers are familiar with the story of Emmett Till as a figure whose death inspired important
moments in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Parker Rhodes chooses to
show another side of Emmett. In the novel, Emmett is a boy who, like Jerome, wanted to be a
professional athlete and whose mother also worried about him wandering around the city. By
having the two ghost boys put their stories side by side, Parker Rhodes forces the reader to
see Emmett Till as a real boy who was loved and deserving of protection from adults.
The growing interactions among these children, both dead and alive, paint a complicated
picture of the real lives of historical figures like Till and of the fictional characters in this
novel. By fleshing out these figures and characters, Parker Rhodes forces the reader to
understand that these figures mattered to the people who loved them. Their lives, in other
words, are much bigger than the stripped-down pictures we see once these children enter our
imaginations as victims.
Pages 133-186
“Dead,” Pages 133-135 Summary: “Roam”
Freed by death from the restrictions placed on Black people’s ability to roam, Jerome
discovers that Chicago is more beautiful beyond the bounds of his neighborhood. He never
looks closely at Green Acres, the place where he died. He watches each of his family
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members struggle with their grief.
“Dead,” Pages 137-138 Summary: “Preliminary Hearing: Chicago Courthouse: April 19”
The judge hearing the preliminary case against Officer Moore apologetically concludes there
isn’t enough evidence to bring a case against him.
“Dead,” Pages 139-143 Summary: “School & After”
The bullies who made Jerome’s life difficult when he was still alive declare a truce with Carlos
and Kim in the aftermath of the shocking outcome of the preliminary hearing. Jerome has
mixed feelings. He is happy about the truce, but it seems unfair that he had to die for it to
happen. Afterward, Kim dances to a rhythm Carlos taps out on the way home, bringing needed
joy to the neighborhood. She suddenly stops dancing and tells Carlos that he needs to tell
Grandma Rogers the truth about where Jerome got the toy gun.
“Dead,” Pages 145-147 Summary: “Tell No Lies”
Jerome has an epiphany: what makes his neighborhood a community is that everyone has a
story to share. Reflecting on this truth helps Jerome to see that Carlos needs to tell Grandma
Rogers the story about giving the gun to Jerome. Jerome also realizes he needs to face up to
reality as well to move one: He needs to hear the full story about how Emmett died. Jerome
recognizes that perhaps his own death is just part of a larger story about the ghost boys.
“Dead,” Pages 149-161 Summary: “Listening”
Jerome is finally ready to hear Emmett’s story. Emmett first takes Jerome to the Chicago
apartment in West Woodlawn—not far from Jerome’s neighborhood—where Emmett grew up.
Jerome is surprised to discover that the neighborhood was poor even then. The neighborhood
was dangerous then as well, so Mrs. Till never allowed Emmett to wander around. The only
place Emmett could ever roam at will was in Mississippi during visits with his cousins.
In late August 1955, Emmett went to Money, Mississippi, to visit his cousins. Emmett puts
Jerome in his story of this fatal visit through the act of storytelling. One day during the visit,
Jerome decides to go into town with his cousins. Before they head to town, one of the older
cousins explains to Emmett that he must be deferential to White people—address them with
titles, do not look them in the eye, step off the road or sidewalk to let a White person pass.
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Emmett thinks these rules are ridiculous and tells his cousins he interacts with White people
in Chicago all the time without such rules, but his cousins insist that White Mississippians
don’t even see Black people as human.
The cousins go to Bryant Grocery Store and Meat Market, where Emmett does three
seemingly harmless things: He places the money for his gum directly into the hand of Mrs.
Bryant, a White woman at the store counter. He smiles at her when he departs and directly
addresses her with a goodbye as he leaves. Mrs. Bryant follows him out of the store, possibly
to retrieve a gun to punish him for daring to touch, speak, and look at her. Puzzled, Emmett
asks what is wrong, but his speech impediment causes the first word of his question to come
out as a whistle; in the segregated South, any hint that a Black person (especially a boy or
man) is flirting with a White woman is sure to enrage White people to the point of violence.
The cousins and Black and White bystanders flee because they sense danger.
Emmett and the cousins run home to escape this threat, but a mob led by Mr. Bryant arrives
at the house that night, drags Emmett from the house, lynches him, executes him by shooting
him, and dumps his body in the Tallahatchie River, leaving bloodstains and Emmett’s hat on
the riverbank as the only evidence of their crime. In the aftermath of this story, all the ghost
boys, including Jerome, moan and wail to mourn the injustice of their deaths. They mourn
together, and Jerome at last feels like he is one of them. Afterward, Emmett explains to
Jerome that “[e]veryone needs their story heard. Felt. We honor each other. Connect across
time” (161).
“Dead,” Pages 163-164 Summary: “School’s Out”
Jerome continues to haunt his old places and reflect on his death. He yells at other Black kids
to keep themselves safe and comes to recognize that Carlos was only trying to make Jerome
happy for just a moment in an unhappy world.
“Dead,” Pages 164-170 Summary: “Carlos”
Jerome wanders to watch over Carlos. Carlos is crying as he rests on his bed. Jerome sees
that Carlos has made a memory altar (a personal spot to grieve and worship) with a
newspaper picture of Jerome, drawings of Carlos and Jerome together, drawings of scenes
leading up to the confrontation in the bathroom and the gun, a silver cross, and candles
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Carlos probably lights at this altar, much like Grandma Rogers does for her husband in a
similar space. Seeking to comfort Carlos, Jerome reaches into the physical world to disturb
the newspaper picture of himself. Carlos recognizes that this is Jerome acting on the world.
The sound of Carlos asking if Jerome forgives him brings Carlos’s father to Carlos’s room.
Carlos’s sense that Jerome forgives him allows Carlos to at last pour out to his father the
whole story of the bullies and giving the toy gun to Jerome. Mr. Rodríquez tells Carlos that he
is sorry he had to be in fear at school. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with being afraid.
The important thing is how you respond to your fear. Carlos decides that he must tell the
Rogers family the truth, and he decides to do it on his own despite his fear they will blame
him. His father also agrees that they will honor Jerome on the Day of the Dead, bringing a
small piece of their San Antonio traditions to Chicago.
“Dead,” Pages 171-176 Summary: “Carlos & Grandma”
Jerome tags along as Carlos goes to talk to Grandma Rogers, and he is surprised to discover
that his old home seems small and confining now that he is a ghost boy. In Kim’s presence,
Carlos tells Grandma the truth and apologizes. The three of them cry together, and one by one
they share how guilty they feel. Grandma wishes she had kept Jerome in the day he died. Kim
wishes she had told her parents and grandmother that Jerome had the gun.
They forgive each other, and Grandma gets Carlos to play the old game of three good things.
Instead, Carolos asks for forgiveness and praises Kim for being a good enough friend to help
him to do the brave thing of telling the truth. This encounter is healing to Jerome, who hopes
the closeness between three important people from his life will help his parents to heal as
well.
“Dead,” Pages 177-186 Summary: “Silence”
Jerome believes he has one last task before moving on—reconciling Sarah and her father. He
goes to her room, which has shifted from pink and girlish to plain, and Jerome also
recognizes for the first time that her middle-class neighborhood is far quieter and lonelier
than the block where Jerome lived.
Sarah is hard at work on a website to document the killing of Black people by law
enforcement. Jerome is worried because Sarah seems deeply unhappy and still is not talking
with her father. He tells her to stop with her project, but she believes having the website will
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force people to remember those who have been killed, to tell their stories. Jerome tells Sarah
to talk to her dad to help him overcome his fear of Black boys, but he also recognizes that the
website is part of bearing witness.
Sarah is struggling with the question of why her dad never tried to help Jerome after he shot
Jerome. Jerome helps Sarah remember what she loves about her dad by asking her to play
the three good things game. The conversation makes Jerome think about White people and
how their fears and stereotyping of Black people make the world dangerous for Black boys.
Even White people who harm or kill Black boys never think they are in the wrong because of
these beliefs. Sarah, Jerome imagines, will always be troubled by her father’s belief that he
was in the right when he killed Jerome, but being troubled will allow her to be a force for
change.
Sarah goes to her father to ask for his help in building her website about Black people killed
because of racial stereotypes and prejudice. He is emotional because she is at last reaching
out to him. Seeing this reconciliation allows Jerome to be free of one of the last tasks he
needs to complete to move on.
Pages 131-186 Analysis
Jerome finally reaches a place of understanding about why he continues to haunt the people
from his former life. He uses his perspective as a ghost to help these people—Sarah, her
father, Carlos, even Emmett—heal. Parker Rhodes also finally recounts the events leading up
to the death of Emmett Till. This is a difficult story, a traumatic one to tell young readers, but
Parker Rhodes does so in a sensitive way that helps young readers make sense of these
fearful stories.
Early in this section, the judge’s decision not to proceed with a trial for Officer Moore would
seem to seal the story of Jerome’s death as another one about White officers killing Black
boys with no consequences. Jerome is angry when he hears the verdict, but his relationship
with Emmett helps him understand that this does not have to be the only story.
Emmett tells Jerome about how, in his childish innocence, he violated racial norms in
Mississippi by interacting with Carolyn Bryant as an equal. Despite his youth, Mrs. Bryant’s
husband and a mob lynched and killed him. Then as now, there was no justice. Parker Rhodes
tells this powerful but violent story by showing the fear of Emmett’s cousins as they warn him
before he enters the store and their fearful reactions when they realize that there will be
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repercussions for his innocent actions.
Parker Rhodes describes in concrete detail what it felt like when the men in the mob inflicted
physical damage on Emmett’s body. She even describes the moment when one of the men
shot and killed Emmett, but she pulls away instantly by noting simply that Emmett’s “spirit
rises” (159) in this moment of racial terror, violence, and death. She uses his hat, which is
somehow not stained by his blood, as a symbol for the pristine nature of the soul of this
murdered child. This image displaces the image that precedes it—his battered body as the
mob throws it into the river.
This is a terrifying story, and most readers, whether young or old, will recoil as they read it.
Parker Rhodes makes a place for readers to process that terror and fear by having the host of
ghost boys mourn after they hear the story. Including the story in such detail forces the
reader to do exactly what Emmett wants Jerome to do—“[b]ear witness” (161). Unlike Sarah
up until the moment the librarian decided to help her find the images and story of Emmett’s
death, all readers will now see they know this story. Parker Rhodes’s decision to put that
story in this narrative forces readers to move from any potential ignorance about these
stories to knowledge not just of Emmett Till’s story but also of the enduring power of racism
that connects his story to those of more contemporary Black boys who have been murdered.
Finally, Jerome begins wrapping up the loose ends that force him to haunt his loved ones.
These tasks are all associated with helping his loved ones grieve and come to terms with his
death. Carlos’s healing commences in earnest when he reveals the story of giving the toy gun
to Jerome. Telling his story gives his listeners, including his father and Grandma Rogers, the
chance to forgive him and give him needed adult guidance. Sarah’s reconciliation is with her
father, whose own healing commences with his agreement to participate in the building of
Sarah’s website, a project that will force him to own up to his own bias and bear witness to
the lives of victims. Jerome’s own reckoning—facing his death—comes at the end of the
novel, however. In short, Parker Rhodes underscores that storytelling rooted in the truth—in
witnessing—is one of the most powerful tools we have to heal ourselves as we confront the
ugly parts of our personal and national history.
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Page 187-Afterword
“Dead,” Pages 187-191 Summary: “Day of the Dead”
On November 1, All Saints’ Day in many Protestant faiths and the Day of the Dead (All Souls’
Day) in the Catholic Church, the Rodríquez and Rogers families come together to remember
their loved ones who have died, especially Jerome. Carlos introduces the Rogers family to his
family’s traditions, such as creating skull pictures of loved ones and placing candy skulls and
food on the graves of dead loved ones. They agree that this joint celebration will become an
annual event.
The celebration draws Emmett and the other ghost boys to Jerome’s grave. Emmett tells
Jerome that this celebration shows his story and death will not be forgotten. As a throng of
ghost boys gather, Jerome realizes that each ghost boy has a living person or persons whom
he haunts because only the living can make changes that will prevent more deaths. Emmett
haunted Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer (later turned Supreme Court justice) who
played a central role in many advances in civil rights during his life. Jerome’s person was
Sarah. Emmett believes the ghost boys will continue to wander around until the killings stop
and there is “[o]nly friendship. Kindness. Understanding” (191).
“Alive,” Pages 195-198 Summary: “That Day”
Jerome goes back to the day he died. It is a cold day, and Jerome plays in Green Acres. He
feels “powerful. Like a first-person shooter in a video game” (195) and imagines for just a
moment that he is a “good guy. A cop. Better yet, a movie star playing a cop” (19) who shoots
down the bad guy. Reality sets in, and Jerome realizes that his pretend play is dangerous
because someone might thing he is “a thug and want a real shoot-out” (196). That’s the
moment in which Officer Moore shoots him. Jerome tries to run away, but the bullets stop
him. He tries to explain that what he is holding is a toy, but he dies thinking about how he
would have liked to have seen his mother or grandmother one last time.
“Dead,” Page 204 Summary: “Last Words”
Jerome ends his story by asking the reader to “[b]ear witness” (204) now that he has told his
story. He demands that the living wake up because only they can change the world to one in
which stories like his never have to be told. He signs his last words with the name “Ghost boy”
(195).
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Afterword Summary
Parker Rhodes explains that the killing of Tamir Rice in 2014 shook her to the point that she
felt compelled to write Ghost Boys. She grew weary of seeing stories that “criminalized” (205)
Black boys to make them guilty for their own deaths at the hands of adults. Recent
scholarship reveals, for example, that nothing Emmett Till did would justify his murder.
Carolyn Bryant, the woman whose honor her husband was supposedly defending when he
helped to kill Emmett, has proclaimed that nothing justified the killing of Till. Parker Rhodes
hopes that parents, teachers, and young people will read Ghost Boys to learn about the
prejudice and fear that make the country ripe for more of these killings.
Parker Rhodes provides additional context about the Day of the Dead and other traditions
people use to honor their dead. She ties this cultural aspect of holidays like Day of the Dead
to her mission as a writer, which is to “honor and speak for those who can no longer speak for
themselves” (207). In the cultures of people who have been oppressed, especially Black
Americans, “bearing witness” (208) can take the form of telling stories that document trauma,
abuse, oppression, racism, and other injustices. Bearing witness through storytelling is also a
key way of allowing the teller to heal.
Page 187-Afterword Analysis
Parker Rhodes provides closure to the plot by having each character come to a place of
acceptance. She also makes the case for art as one of the ways we can bear witness to the
deaths of the ghost boys.
Jerome finishes up the last tasks he needs to complete to move on to some other spaces. His
very last task is to give the reader the chance to bear witness and to allow his family to mourn
him. Parker Rhodes allows the reader to bear witness by representing in vivid detail the
moments before Jerome’s death. She focuses most on capturing how Jerome felt as he died.
He was an innocent boy engaging in childhood fantasies about being the good guy with a
gun, a hero, a cop.
The tragedy of his death is particularly poignant because it comes at the exact moment that
he falls out of this fantasy to remember that as a Black boy, he will be assumed to be the bad
guy. Capturing this moment of innocence confronting the reality of life as a Black boy allows
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Parker Rhodes to capture an essential truth about Black children, which is that they are not
allowed to long remain innocent and still survive.
The bicultural rites of the Rodríquez and Rogers family is a moment of bearing witness across
cultural lines. That the novel wraps up with such a moment reinforces Parker Rhodes’s
commitment to bearing witness to the ways that these deaths damage us all. Still, this ending
holds out the possibility of healing for victims and survivors, so long as we insist on keeping
the truths and stories of victims and survivors alive.
Parker Rhodes returns to these themes in the Afterword by framing the novel as one designed
to bear witness. The Afterword makes the case for art and acts of creativity as powerful tools
available to the grieving, even when they don’t have traditional political power. Such acts of
creativity are apparent throughout this last section, especially in Carlos’s memory altar, the
grave decorations and skull picture that Carlos creates to place on Jerome’s grave, and even
in Sarah’s website, which leverages digital tools to paint a fuller picture of this history.
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Character Analysis
Jerome Rogers
The protagonist of the novel, Jerome Rogers is just 12-years-old on the day Officer Moore kills
him. His death is the inciting incident of the novel, and his efforts to shape the lives of people
connected by his death pushes the plot forward.
Alive, Jerome is a timid boy who spends his days attempting to be a good boy and dodging
bullies and bad influences in his neighborhood. As a ghost, Jerome is finally free to roam
across Chicago to see a city that is much more beautiful than he ever imagined. He haunts
Sarah Moore, the daughter of the officer who killed him, and comes to understand how
privileged and protected White children are in comparison to Black children.
As a ghost, Jerome comes of age by meeting and listening to the story of Emmett Till, just
one of many Black boys whom White adults killed out of prejudice and hate. He takes on
tasks—reconciling Sarah with her father and encouraging his friend Carlos to tell the truth
about his role in Jerome’s death—to move on to the wider world. By the end of the novel,
Jerome has a greater understanding of the history of race and prejudice. His is a character
arc that takes him from innocence to knowledge.
Emmett Till
Emmett is based on the historical Emmett Till (1941-1955), who was lynched to death by a
mob in Money, Mississippi after interacting informally with Carolyn Bryant, the White wife of
one of the men in the mob. Historically, the sight of the 14-year-old’s mutilated body in an
open casket galvanized many to act to secure civil rights for Black Americans.
The Emmett Till of the novel is an experienced ghost who serves as a wise guide who shows
Jerome how to navigate death. Emmett helps Jerome to understand that he will be tied to his
immediate circle of family and friends until he helps them bear witness to his death, grieve,
and move on from his death. Emmett also shares the story of his own death to help Jerome
place his own death in a larger historical context.
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Sarah Moore
Sarah is the privileged and sheltered 12-year-old daughter of Officer Moore, the man who kills
Jerome. Sarah is a typical middle-class girl leading a comfortable, unexamined life until her
father’s actions force her to confront her own privilege, the role of unconscious bias in her
father’s actions, and the impact of racism all around her.
With nudges from Jerome, she learns all she can about the killing of Black boys and men,
going so far as to build a website to bear witness to these deaths. Sarah finally comes of age
by reconciling with her father by asking for his help in building the website. Sarah is the only
fully realized White character in the novel. She serves as a foil to Jerome and as a
commentary on how White people can become allies in the struggle to end prejudice.
Carlos Rodríquez
Carlos is a native of San Antonio, Texas and moves to Chicago. Like Jerome, he comes from a
working-class family, is lonely, and is the target of bullies. Unlike Jerome, Carlos fights back
by brandishing the toy gun the first time the bullies at Jerome’s school attack him. His
boldness inspires Jerome to fight back as well and to let his guard down by engaging in
fantasy play with the gun. In the aftermath of Jerome’s death, Carlos responds to his guilt and
grief by becoming a guardian figure for Kim, Jerome’s sister, and by befriending Grandma
Rogers. Carlos comes to greater maturity when he admits to Grandma Rogers that he gave
the gun to Jerome.
Officer Moore
Officer Moore is the police officer who kills Jerome; he is never brought to trial beyond
preliminaries because a judge rules that his defense that he was in fear for his life is enough
to shield him from being held accountable. Moore’s character serves as an archetype—the
law enforcement officer whose ability to do his job and perceive reality when interacting with
Black people is marred by unconscious bias, with tragic consequences. Parker Rhodes adds
depth to Moore’s character by showing his efforts to reconnect with his daughter in the
aftermath of Jerome’s death. Ultimately, Officer Moore changes as a result of his relationship
with Sarah, who enlists him in building her website on the killings of Black boys and men.
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Grandma Rogers
The matriarch of the Rogers family, Grandma Rogers is a native of the South and holds folk
beliefs, such as the possibility that the dead haunt the living with particular purposes in mind.
Before Jerome’s death, Grandma Rogers is an encouraging and protective person who asks
Jerome to tell her three good things before he leaves for school and who insists that he must
be a good boy even when others in his neighborhood are not. After Jerome’s death, Grandma
Rogers is aware of Jerome, but she never sees him. She also helps Kim and Carlos grieve
while Jerome’s parents are too consumed with surviving and their own grief to pay attention.
Grandma Rogers serves as an important link between Jerome’s generation and the generation
that came of age when Emmett Till was murdered.
Kim Rogers
The younger sister of Jerome, Kim is a well-behaved child who uses books to escape from the
difficult surroundings of their neighborhood. Just like her brother, Kim has absorbed the
lesson that Black children must be extra careful to avoid death. She looks on in disapproval
when Jerome takes toy gun from Carlos because she knows their parents will disapprove. She
chooses to keep the toy gun a secret from the Rogers because, unlike their parents, she is
aware of how difficult life is as a Black child in their school and neighborhood. Kim’s
experiences show that the burden of violence against Black children weighs heavy on girls as
well.
Trayvon Martin
Trayvon is a character based on the historical Trayvon Martin (1995-2012), a teenager killed
by a vigilante in Sanford, Florida. Martin’s killer was tried and acquitted, and the
senselessness of his death was one of several events that roused what eventually became
the Black Lives Matter movement. Trayvon has no dialogue in the novel, but his distinctive
hoodie and presence in the host of ghost boys drives home the enduring nature of these
killings.
Eddie, Snap, and Mike
Eddie, Snap, and Mike are the three bullies who make Jerome’s life miserable at school, and
they begin bullying Carlos immediately as well. Jerome’s fear of these bullies is part of the
reason why he takes the toy gun from Carlos. The most significant shift in these characters
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occurs after Officer Moore is excused from standing trial. They declare a truce with Carlos
and claim Kim as family, a temporary peace that shows the possibility of the community
coming together as one response to unfairness in the justice system.
Mr. and Mrs. Rogers
Jerome’s parents are vivid, grieving figures at the start of the novel who watch helplessly as
their son’s killer is not brought to justice. Mr. Rogers’s response is angry, and he almost
immediately makes the connection between Jerome’s death and that of other Black boys and
men. Mrs. Rogers also makes the connection by asking that Jerome’s casket be an open one
like Emmett Till’s. Prior to Jerome’s death, the Rogers were hardworking, working-class
parents intent on helping their children achieve success despite their poor neighborhood and
lack of financial resources.
Mr. Rodríquez (Papi)
Carlos’s father appears near the end of the novel. He is the first person to whom Carlos tells
his story of being bullied and of giving the gun to Jerome. Mr. Rodríquez’s willingness to be a
kind and encouraging listener gives Carlos the strength to tell the truth to Grandma Rogers.
The brief encounter between father and son is just one of many that shows the importance of
listening as an act of bearing witness.
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Themes
Black Lives Matter
Ghost Boys is an explicit effort to tell the story of Black Lives Matter for younger audiences.
Parker Rhodes’s choice of characters, inciting event, and plot are all designed to translate the
movement into a realistic, age-appropriate narrative.
Black Lives Matter is a modern civil rights movement designed to counter brutal policing and
the dehumanization of Black people of all genders and ages. Mass, nonviolent protest is
essential to the movement, and unlike American civil rights movements of past decades,
Black Lives Matter has no centralized leadership. It relies on social media to help organize
activities and protest actions. Black Lives Matter coalesced in reaction to the killings of Black
children, teens, and men, including 17-year-old Trayvon Martin as the teen walked home from
a snack run.
Black Lives Matter is the central historical and cultural context for the novel. The inciting
event of the novel—the killing of Jerome Rogers by a police officer—is all but ripped from the
headlines and is similar to the killing of Tamir Rice, who was killed in Cleveland, Ohio in 2014
as he played with a toy gun. In the aftermath of the killing of each of these children, stories
designed to assign blame to the victims and exonerate the perpetrators arose in the media. In
her fictional narrative of Jerome’s killing, Parker Rhodes shows that Jerome is a child
engaging in child’s play in Green Acres when Officer Moore kills him. She takes care to bring in
the physical reality of the child’s body—slight, 12-years-old, no taller than the daughter of the
officer who killed him—to counter Officer Moore’s testimony that Jerome was big and
intimidating. While Parker Rhodes is careful to avoid demonizing Officer Moore, she makes a
point to show that his sense that his life was under threat from Jerome is one rooted in
unconscious bias and racial stereotypes rather than any culpability on Jerome’s part.
Although the idea that Black lives do matter should be an obvious one, American culture,
especially law enforcement, so frequently dehumanizes Black people that this idea is a
powerful assertion designed to counter the disrespectful ways law enforcement treats Black
people. Parker Rhodes uses her novel to show that the officers’ actions in the aftermath of
the shooting dehumanize Jerome even further, including their failure to render him medical
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aid and the decision to leave his body on the ground for hours after he dies. The decision to
leave his body there echoes that same decision that police officers made after they shot and
killed teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.
Finally, Parker Rhodes takes care to represent in a realistic way the many ways that legal and
law enforcement systems allow the killing to continue with impunity. The tense court scenes
in the preliminary hearings to determine if Officer Moore will stand trial, his successful
defense that he feared for his life and was thus justified in shooting Jerome, and the
determination—even in front of a sympathetic judge—that he is not accountable are all events
that one can find represented in the real-life efforts to hold police shooters accountable.
The events Parker Rhodes describes are painful, traumatic ones even for adults. She pulls no
punches in her representation of the killings of Jerome and other Black boys. She describes
his pain and fear as he dies. Still, that death comes only at the end of the novel, long after we
have had the chance to see Jerome was a real boy, a good boy, with typical childhood
worries. Because Jerome is a ghost, his death assumes a much larger meaning that allows all
the characters, even the man who killed him, some form of redemption. The possibility of
healing and hope in the face of his unthinkable death makes the novel a difficult read that
nevertheless emphasizes the ability of even young people to be resilient and brave even in the
face of the tragedy.
Saying Their Names: Testimony and Witnessing in Black Culture and Literature
That theme of resilience looms large in the novel, and one of the ways that Parker Rhodes
manages to make a story about the ghosts of murdered children a hopeful one is by
emphasizing the power in bearing witness and telling stories about tragedy, especially for
communities that have suffered ongoing and historic oppression.
At the start of the novel, Jerome’s story seems like it will be swallowed up by the brief note in
The Chicago Tribune that he had a gun and Officer Moore’s legal testimony that Jerome was
an actual threat that justified shooting. Parker Rhodes uses the novel to tell a fuller story
about Jerome. She portrays his hopes and dreams of going to college and becoming a
professional athlete. She paints a grim picture of the life of a middle-schooler forced to face
down bullies each school day and dodge people in his own community who deal drugs. She
shows his low-key bravery in moments like his decision to befriend Carlos, the new kid,
despite the possible social costs of doing so. Parker Rhodes’s fictional narrative allows her to
bear witness to the difficulties and strong character that it takes for real-life Black boys to
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survive to adulthood in America.
The other important way that Parker Rhodes uses the novel to bear witness to the struggles
of Black Americans is by connecting Jerome’s individual, fictional story to a larger history of
the killing of Black boys in America with the story of Emmett Till, leader of a host of ghost
boys, being the most prominent. While it is a painful reality that Black people, especially men
and boys, are today dying at the hands of the police, the Emmett Till story in this novel makes
it clear that this is a long, old history that must not be forgotten.
Parker Rhodes testifies to this history by telling Till’s story in exact detail, down to the
physical sensations and fear he experiences as a mob of White adults lynch and shoot him. In
the novel, the moment after Till tells his story is one in which each of the ghost boys howls in
grief about the violence of his death. Through the act of listening and loudly grieving, the
ghost boys experience what Parker Rhodes calls “catharsis (emotional cleansing)” (208), a
necessary part of the healing process that allows them to stop haunting the same places and
people forever. Her novel provides the space and opportunity for young people and adults to
do that same kind of cultural, emotional work.
Parker frames the novel as a correction to the historical record on Till’s death, but her main
focus is opening up a space for conversation and reflection on the meaning of his death and
the deaths of many boys like him. To talk to a child about death, especially that of another
child, is difficult. Most adults want to avoid such conversations. In Ghost Boys , Parker Rhodes
makes it clear that having such conversations and telling such stories are part of the
equipment and cultural literacy that all children need to confront the reality of our world.
The Nature of Black Childhood in America
Talking to children about death is difficult, but talking to children about the possibility of their
own deaths is an even more difficult task that parents of Black children and children of color
have to face every day. In fact, the so-called talk is a rite of passage that appears frequently in
narratives about Black childhood. The talk frequently involves training children to act in
nonthreatening ways to soothe the fears of White people, especially police officers, to protect
Black children from the dangerous consequences of stereotypes about Black people and
Black children.
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Parker Rhodes portrays the threat of death and violence that hangs over Black children to
counter common ideas about childhood in America. To be a child in most cultures is to be
innocent, and this innocence is only possible because the adults around the child are called
to protect that innocence. Protecting that innocence could involve protecting children from
exposure to violence or becoming the victim of violence or violation. In Ghost Boys, Parker
Rhodes makes it clear that this kind of innocence is a privilege extended only to certain
children, generally those like Sarah, who are White and middle-class. Sarah’s pink bedroom
and her Peter Pan book are both important symbols of the way privilege allows her to have a
childhood free of the threats of drug dealers and death at the hands of law enforcement.
For Jerome, a Black child of working-class parents who live in a neighborhood hemmed in by
aggressive policing and drug dealers, the assumption is that he lacks innocence. No matter
how small or young a Black child is, adults frequently assume the child is much older than he
or she is. With that mislabeling of children as adults comes the burden of a second
stereotype, the idea that there is something inherently criminal about Black adults, especially
men. The presumption that Jerome is guilty of something plays a role in how Officer Moore
sees the boy when he approaches him after the 911 call. Despite Jerome’s small physical
size, the psychological reality of how Officer Moore sees Jerome is that Jerome is big and
threatening, and this has everything to do with ideas Officer Moore consciously or
unconsciously has about Blackness.
The stereotypes of Black children as lacking innocence and Black men as inherently criminal
play out in ways that place firm limits on things as straightforward as where Black children
can move (Jerome never manages to get out of the eight blocks between school and home
until after death, for example). The chain of events that ends in Emmett Till’s death starts with
seemingly innocuous actions—placing money directly in a White woman’s hand, looking her in
the eye, and accidentally making a whistling sound. The limits Till violates are social
boundaries that were much more rigid in 1950s Mississippi, and the punishment for these
violations is mob violence.
Jerome’s breaking of boundaries is a small one—playing with a toy gun in an unsafe
neighborhood. Although Jerome’s death comes at the hands of a person with legal authority
to mete out punishment, it is hard to miss the parallel between that mob and Officer Moore.
The point seems to be that no matter how big or how small the misstep is, Black children
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cannot afford to make any mistakes when it comes to respecting written and unwritten norms
that limit their freedom. Given how high the stakes are, innocence is not a luxury the Jeromes
and Emmetts of the world can afford.
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Symbols & Motifs
The Toy Gun
The toy gun first appears in a news story that describes the gun as the reason Officer Moore
shot and killed Jerome. In the news story, the gun is a potent symbol for the assumed
criminality of Black boys and men. In the news story, there is no mention that the gun is a toy,
an omission that shows the power of unconscious bias to transform objects of play into the
real thing.
The gun as a toy—one that nevertheless serves as a shield against the everyday violence of
school—first enters the narrative on Page 58, when Carlos reveals the truth about what it is to
Jerome. The toy is a symbol of both Carlos and Jerome’s efforts to achieve some sense of
safety in a world and community where Black children and children of color are unsafe.
The gun is a dangerous toy in such a world, and this point is driven home in the scene near
the end of the novel when Parker Rhodes finally reveals the moments of Jerome’s death.
Running through Green Acres, Jerome feels a sense of power and affirmation as he imagines
himself as a good guy with a gun. That fantasy quickly slips away as he realizes being seen
with even a toy gun could confirm people’s expectations that a Black child, especially a boy, is
always a criminal. Ultimately the gun is a symbol of what it means to be Black and a child—to
be, in truth, harmless and innocent but perceived as dangerous by others.
Haunting and Ghosts
Parker Rhodes uses haunting and ghosts to represent the enduring impact of racial violence
on the lives of victims and survivors of this violence. One immediate impact is trauma, the
psychological damage done when a person is forced to live through (or linger on as a ghost)
life-threatening or life-destroying violence. Jerome’s death is so violent that he haunts his
family members, Carlos, and Sarah, sometimes without them even being aware of his
enduring presence. Unless victims and survivors face up to what happened to them, they
remain stuck in place and cannot move forward in life or death.
Sometimes this enduring impact can be a movement to bear witness to the violence and
transform that trauma into something that can change the conditions that allowed the
violence to occur in the first place. The Emmett Till character in the novel haunts Thurgood
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Marshall, whose efforts to bear witness to and honor the death of Till led to important civil
rights victories.
In her Afterword, Parker Rhodes explains that the contemporary killing of Black boys
consumed her to the point that she felt compelled to use her artistic skills to bear witness to
their deaths and to create a space for acknowledgement, grieving, and dialogue around what
must be done to stop these killings. In this case, being haunted means a refusal to forget this
painful history but also an insistence on finding a creative way to bear witness to these
events.
Carlos’s Drawings
Carlos is a lonely child who expresses his grief most clearly in his drawings. He gives
Grandma Rogers a drawing on the day of Jerome’s funeral, and the drawing is a symbol of his
sense of guilt and grief over giving the toy gun to Jerome. Carlos makes drawings of the toy
gun and a scene of the two boys drumming on the bathroom stall; these drawings represent
the truth about his role in the death of Jerome. Carlos’s last drawing is a skull drawing of
Jerome; this drawing is an object that allows him to bring his own cultural and religious
beliefs about grieving to the Day of the Dead celebration of Jerome’s life. The drawing serves
as a way of creatively bearing witness and moving on from Jerome’s death.
Sarah’s Website
Sarah’s website is a symbol of the impact of Jerome’s death on her. The website is a visual
history of Black boys and men killed by White people, including police officers like her father.
Her creation of the website shows that she is on her way to becoming an activist who sees
that the responsibility for educating people about the history of racism in this country belongs
with White people as well. In addition, Sarah convinces her father to help her with the website,
making it an important symbol for the reconciliation between Moore and his daughter.
Peter Pan
Peter Pan (1915) is a novel by J. M. Barrie that centers around a White boy who chooses not
to grow up. The book is one of many in Sarah’s room, so it serves as a marker for her class
status (books are in short supply in the Rogers household because they are poor). The plot of
the book, especially its premise that childhood is such a time of innocence and joy that one
would choose to be a child forever, idealizes White middle-class childhood of the kind Sarah
has until Jerome begins haunting her.
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Jerome scoffs at this notion of childhood and the book itself because his reality as a Black,
working-class child is to be a victim and to be at risk from bullies, more powerful adults, and
law enforcement. His ridicule of the book is one of the ways Parker Rhodes contrasts the
protection afforded to White children with the exposure of Black children to life-threatening
prejudice and trauma.
Emmett Till’s White Hat
One of the most frequently used images of Emmett Till is a photograph of him in a distinctive,
dark-colored hat. In the novel, Parker Rhodes transforms the hat into a white one that
symbolizes Till’s innocence and goodness. The white hat is one of the first things Jerome
notices about Emmett when the ghost boy appears to him. Emmett drops the hat as he plays
with his Mississippi cousins, a gesture that shows his innocence and lack of awareness of
the danger surrounding him in the segregated South. His hat survives without a stain on the
banks of the Tallahatchie despite his violent death, making it an important symbol of how his
essential innocence survives the circumstances of his death.
Sarah’s Bedroom
Initially, Sarah’s bedroom is a stereotypically pink and feminine one that is filled with books
and cushy bed linens that show how sheltered she is as the child of parents who are middleclass and White. As Sarah becomes more aware of the role of racism and unconscious bias in
the actions of her father and others who have killed Black children, she removes the creature
comforts from her bedroom. The shift from that comfortable bedroom to one dominated by
her work on the website represents her acknowledgement of her White privilege.
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Important Quotes
1. “Jerome Rogers, 12, shot at abandoned Green Street lot. Officer says, 'He had a gun.’”
(Page 5)
This news story reflects the popular, victim-blaming narratives that serve as after-the-fact
justifications that law enforcement officers use when their victims are young and Black. This
headline leaves out crucial facts, including that the gun was a toy and that Officer Moore had
many choices, including not firing as soon as he exited the police cruiser.
2. “I thought I was bigger. Tough. But I’m just a bit of nothing.”
(Page 12)
Jerome recognizes his own vulnerability as a child as he observes his death from above as a
ghost. The smallness of his physical presence causes Jerome to question in this moment
whether he truly matters.
3. “Doesn’t seem fair. Nobody ever paid me any attention. I skated by. Kept my head low. Now
I’m famous.”
(Page 12)
Jerome’s self-description here shows his approach to dealing with his family’s expectations
and the threats posed by bullies and racial prejudice—he attempted to be a “good boy” who
did exactly what he was told to survive. This self-imposed invisibility did not protect him in
the end—not from bullies and not from the police. His inability to protect himself as an
individual highlights the role of larger, systemic forces in the violence that consumes his life
in the end.
4. “Ma always says, ‘In this neighborhood, getting a child to adulthood is perilous.’”
(Page 13)
Ma’s statement highlights the vulnerability of Black children and counters idealized notions of
childhood as a time of innocence. For Black, working-class children in Jerome’s
neighborhood, childhood is a time of peril, one in which being innocent or ignorant is actively
dangerous.
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5. “We walk to school. Not too fast like we’re running; not too slow like we’re daring someone
to stop us. Our walk has got to be just right.”
(Page 14)
As a result of the peril of being a Black child, both Jerome and his sister have likely absorbed
the lesson that they have to regulate their behavior to seem less threatening to law
enforcement. This set of behaviors means they cannot engage in normal childhood behaviors
(running, for example), which shows that even their freedom of motion is limited by the racist
and violent context of their neighborhood and society.
6. “Two blocks from school, drug dealers slip powder or pill packets to customers, stuffing
cash into their pockets. Pop says, ‘Not enough jobs, but still, it’s wrong. Drugs kill.’ Me and
Kim cross the street, away from the dealers. They’re not the worst, though. School bullies are
the worst. Bullies never leave you alone.”
(Pages 14 - 15)
Parker Rhodes here provides realistic context to show that some of the threats that Black
children like Jerome and Kim face are ones that exist both because of systemic inequality
(lack of employment opportunities) but also individual choices in response to those systemic
problems. The bullies at school and the drug dealers choose self-interest and harm to the
community, unlike the Rogers. This quote also highlights that Jerome’s life is marred by
violence even before his encounter with Officer Moore.
7. “Middle school is like a country. Alliances are hard, dangerous. Other kids’ fights become
your fights. You have to worry about your friends’ friends, their gangs on the streets and in
school. Everyone’s in a crew. Except me.”
(Pages 40 - 41)
Jerome’s calculation that friendship is dangerous shows that his childhood as a Black,
working-class boy in Chicago is far from the idealized White childhood that dominates most
people’s notions of what childhood should be like. Friendships are key to having a happy
childhood, but the difficulties Jerome faces prevent him from having the support of friends.
8. “‘Black lives matter!’ someone hollers. ‘Jerome mattered,’ shouts Grandma. ‘He was a good
boy.’”
(Page 52)
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Black Lives Matter is part of the historical and cultural context of the novel, hence the explicit
inclusion of the slogan here. Grandma’s response, to highlight how this individual life
mattered, reinforces Parker Rhodes’s efforts to get beyond simplistic and partial narratives
about the lives of victims and survivors.
9. “‘My dad protects and serves. That’s what policemen do.’
‘He didn’t protect me. Everybody in my neighborhood knows cops do whatever they want.’”
(Page 65)
This quote captures the difference between how many White and Black children see law
enforcement. For Sarah, a White child who lives in privileged circumstances, police officers
are figures of protection. For Jerome, a Black child, a boy, and a person who lives in a
working-class neighborhood, police officers are one of many threats he has to dodge.
10. “How many times had I heard: ‘Be careful of police’; ‘Be careful of white people…’
Everybody in the neighborhood knew it. Pop told me as soon as I could read.”
(Pages 69 - 70)
These warnings from the parents in the Rogers family comprise the so-called talk, a rite of
passage that Black children go through as parents attempt to improve their children’s
chances of surviving encounters with racist or unconsciously biased White people. The death
of Jerome shows that until systemic bias and racism are addressed, such talks will not be
enough.
11. “Sarah’s not stupid but even if I was alive, we wouldn’t live in the same world. Hers is a
fantasy world. Like a TV family in a huge house with plenty of money, food. Being poor is real.
Our church has a food pantry, emergency dollars for winter heating. Last year when Ma’s
appendix broke, when her sick leave was gone, we got bread, peanut butter, and applesauce.”
(Page 90)
Jerome articulates the difference between a privileged White childhood and the struggle of
working-class Black childhood. He is also here naming how difficult it is to overcome the
challenges these differences in daily reality pose to Black and White people’s ability to
understand each other.
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12. “Hundreds and hundreds of shadow boys. A heart-wrenching crew. Army strong. No,
zombie apocalypse strong. Standing on lawns, in the streets, their faces raised to me. All
children, except one, grow up.”
(Page 96)
The size of the host of ghost boys is a visual representation of how extensive and enduring
the history of violence against Black children is. The “all children, except one, grow up”
echoes a line from Peter Pan, in which the failure to grow up is a longed-for fantasy for a
White child. It contrasts with the reality here, which is that racial violence prevents many
Black children from growing up. This moment of awful recognition is one of several in which
Jerome comes to see his death as a part of a larger history.
13. “Emmett’s death made a difference. His death began the African American Civil Rights
Movement.”
(Page 116)
Sarah’s librarian is attempting to help Sarah process the death of Emmett Till in this
conversation by situating it as a part of the history of the movement for civil rights. Sarah
eventually internalizes the idea of testifying and bearing witness to Black deaths by building
her website.
14. “If I were alive, my whole body would be trembling. Officer Moore speaks (I think) a truth
he believes. When truth’s a feeling, can it be both? Both true and untrue? In truth: I feared for
my life.”
(Page 132)
This is the moment when Jerome finally recognizes the important role perception plays in
differences between how Black and White people process the same set of facts and
situations. That last sentence is Officer Moore’s rationale for killing Jerome (a defense the
legal system accepts as a reasonable one), but it also captures the reality of many Black
people, who carry the burden of fearing death because of the beliefs of the Officer Moores of
the world.
15. “In the opinion of this court, there is not enough evidence to charge Officer Moore with
excessive force, manslaughter, or murder.”
(Page 138)
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This outcome is devastating to the Rogers family, but it is a realistic outcome when one
reviews the trial outcomes in high-profile cases (The people who killed Trayvon Martin,
Philando Castile, and Michael Brown, for example, were not called to account). Parker
Rhodes’s decision to have this outcome shows her commitment to bearing witness to the
true history of these killings.
16. “My neighborhood’s poor, segregated. Until I started wandering, I didn’t know by how
much. Didn’t know how much I was living in a danger zone. But why did cops fear me?”
(Page 149)
As a Black child, Jerome’s horizon has been limited from the beginning by class and race
inequality. One of the insidious effects of systemic racism is that Black people, even children,
have limited physical mobility. As a result, Jerome has no idea what most of his city looks
like. As a child, he still has not yet come to understand that this limited mobility and the role
of law enforcement in maintaining this limited mobility are part of systemic inequality in the
United States.
17. “Sidestep if white people are walking on the same street. Step into the road if you have to.
Let whites pass first.”
(Page 153)
Emmett Till’s Mississippi cousins attempt to explain to him in these quotes the racial norms
that place limits on how Black people are to interact with White people in the more rigidly
segregated South. The point is that in public spaces, Black people must show deference to
White people. Like Jerome many decades later, these children have been given “the talk” to
make it less likely that they will run afoul of angry or racist White people.
18. “A woman with long brown hair sits on a stool behind the counter. She’s pale, with red
lipstick and brown eyes. Emmett digs out a purple bubble gum from a bin and puts a penny in
her hand. He walks away. Not seeing the woman’s outrage. I see it. Hatred. At the doorway,
he stops, turns, and smiles. ‘Goodbye.’”
(Page 155)
On their face, these should be harmless actions—placing money in the cashier’s hands,
saying goodbye before leaving. In the segregated South, to brush the skin of a White woman
and look her in the eye is an act of daring and lack of deference that proves deadly. Emmett,
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accustomed to a less stringent segregation in Chicago, violates these norms, with tragic
results.
19. “‘Teach you. I’m going to teach you.’ Bam. ‘You talked sass.’ Bam. ‘Nobody disrespects my
wife.’ Bam, bam. Emmett’s face swells.”
(Page 158)
In this scene, the dialogue makes it clear that the violence these White adults commit against
Emmett Till is designed as punishment for violating racial norms. Parker Rhodes chooses to
include explicit description of this violence—even when these men shoot Emmett and dump
his body—to bear true witness to the awfulness of Emmett’s death, despite the possibility of
upsetting younger readers with these portrayals of graphic violence.
20. “Everyone needs their story heard. Felt. We honor each other. Connect across time.”
(Page 161)
Emmett is here explaining to Jerome that bearing witness through testifying and storytelling
are key ways people like the ghost boys and survivors make sense of their deaths. Jerome
comes of age as a ghost once he recognizes he must help those who have survived his death
to engage in bearing witness.
21. “It’s okay that Sarah’s still troubled; she should be. It’s how Sarah helps herself and the
world.”
(Page 184)
Jerome is here recognizing that his role is not to help Sarah return to the protected and
untroubled childhood she had; instead he sees that her movement from privileged ignorance
to knowledge—grief and guilt, even—will help her to be an ally in the struggle to end racial
violence.
22. “With a gun, I feel powerful. Like a first-person shooter in a video game. Except I’m inside
the game. Feeling the rush of air; lungs aching, imagining I’m a good guy. A cop. Better yet, a
movie star playing a cop. A future agent slicing with laser beams. Destroying aliens, zombies.
I’m brave, bold.”
(Page 195)
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There are few moments of pure joy and play in Jerome’s life, but this one, which occurs as he
plays with the toy gun and just before his death, shows the measure of what racism and
unconscious bias steal from Black children—the ability to imagine themselves as the good
guy without danger to their lives. This moment is short-lived—Jerome almost immediately
comes back to Earth because he recognizes the danger of even pretending to be a good guy
with a gun, but Officer Moore is moving on him by that moment.
23. “Bear witness. My tale is told. Wake. Only the living can make the world better. Live and
make it better. Don’t let me (Or anyone else) Tell this tale again.”
(Page 204)
This is the last section of the novel, and it is one in which Parker Rhodes makes a direct call to
action to the reader. The implication is that listening to a story like this alone is not enough.
Art and any form of bearing witness should be just the first step in making change to address
injustice.
24. “During my lifetime, Emmett Till and countless other teens and young men have died
because of conscious or unconscious racism. However, Tamir Rice’s death at twelve, like
Emmett Till’s death at fourteen, unnerved me, because their deaths criminalized black boys as
children. It is tragic when adults, who are meant to protect children, instead betray a child’s
innocence.”
(Page 205)
Parker Rhodes here describes how being psychologically haunted by these deaths inspired
her decision to use her creativity to do something about it. Her insight here is how the
shadow of this violence prevents Black children from living out idealized notions of
childhood/boyhood.
25. “Bearing witness” has long been crucial to African American communities—indeed to all
ethnic groups who have suffered oppression.”
(Page 208)
Parker Rhodes advances in this quote the notion that bearing witness through storytelling or
other means of memorializing the dead and victimized can be healing for individuals and
members of oppressed communities.
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Essay Topics
1. How does the novel fit into the context of the Black Lives Matter movement?
2. Compare and contrast Sarah’s life as a White child and Jerome’s life as a Black child. What
impacts do class, race, and neighborhood have on the reality of their daily lives?
3. Jerome comes to a better understanding of why he haunts people connected to him as a
result of his death. What tasks must he complete before moving on, and what do these tasks
tell us about what Americans must do to come to terms with the killing of Black children?
4. Sarah moves from not knowing anything about the murders of Black children to building a
website about these deaths. What enables her to make this move from ignorance to
knowledge, and how does building the website help her heal?
5. Discuss the evolution of Jerome’s perspective on the actions of Officer Moore when he
shot and killed Jerome.
6. What does Emmett Till mean when he tells Jerome that people must bear witness? How
does bearing witness help each of the characters in the novel? How does the novel itself
serve as an act of bearing witness?
7. What is unconscious bias? What role does it play in Officer Moore’s actions on the day he
shoots Jerome?
8. Emmett Till’s death was publicized using photos of his open casket and of his grieving
mother, while Jerome’s death is publicized using video. These images are powerful and
painful to watch and hear, but they sometimes inspire real action in people who encounter
them. Have you seen or heard mass media images of Black men or boys who have been killed
by the police? How did you feel as you confronted these images, or did you choose not to see
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or hear them? What impact did these images and sounds have on you and your
understanding of racial stereotypes in America? If you are a young person, an adult might
have made this choice for you. Do you agree with the decision of this adult? Why, or why not?
9. Ghost Boys is a book for young readers, but it includes direct presentations of the deaths
of Emmett Till and Jerome. Why do you think Parker Rhodes chose to include these deaths?
Make an argument for whether including direct presentations of the deaths is age
appropriate.
10. If you are teaching the text, what kind of scaffolding and classroom activities will you
need to complete to help learners in your classroom process some of the traumatic events in
the text? See Facing History and Ourselves’ “Confronting the Murder” website
(https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/emmett-till-series-four-lessons/confrontingmurder) for sample activities.
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