Books with author Chris Crowe

As the fiftieth anniversary approaches, there's a renewed interest in this infamous 1955 murder case, which made a lasting mark on American culture, as well as the future Civil Rights Movement. Chris Crowe's IRA Award-winning novel and his gripping, photo-illustrated nonfiction work are currently the only books on the teenager's murder written for young adults.

At first Hiram is excited to visit his hometown in Mississippi. But soon after he arrives, he crosses paths with Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who is also visiting for the summer, and Hiram sees firsthand how the local whites mistreat blacks who refuse to know their place. When Emmett's tortured dead body is found floating in a river, Hiram is determined to find out who could do such a thing. But what will it cost him to know? Mississippi Trial, 1955 is a gripping read, based on true events that helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.

The kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till is famous as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was visiting family in a small town in Mississippi during the summer of 1955. Likely showing off to friends, Emmett allegedly whistled at a white woman. Three days later his brutally beaten body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River. The extreme violence of the crime put a national spotlight on the Jim Crow ways of the South, and many Americans-Black and white-were further outraged at the speedy trial of the white murderers. Although the two white men were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, they later bragged publicly about the crime. It was a galvanizing moment for Black leaders and ordinary citizens, including such activists as Rosa Parks. In clear, vivid detail Chris Crowe investigates the before-and-aftermath of the crime, as well as the dramatic court trial, and places it into the context of the nascent Civil Rights Movement. With lively narrative and abundantly illustrated with forty fascinating contemporaneous photographs, this impressive work of nonfiction brings fresh insight to the case in a manner that will be accessible and eye-opening for teenagers and adults alike.

Throughout the 1960s much of America-especially the South-conducted itself under the cloud of segregation enforced by "Jim Crow" laws. Whites and blacks were separate, and in most cases, certainly not equal. Against this backdrop, the story of 14-year-old Emmett Till is set. Emmett was a young boy from Chicago visiting his family in Mississippi when he allegedly made some "ugly remarks" to a white woman. Following this, the woman's husband and a group of other men kidnapped and murdered Emmett. Acquitted of the crime, these men would go free only to later admit their guilt to a national audience in Look Magazine. Setting off a firestorm of revolt, this touchstone event helped spark the Civil Rights Movement that would grip the nation through the '60s and '70s. Acclaimed author Chris Crowe sheds new light on this often under-reported or overshadowed tragedy of American history. With a compassionate tone, narrator Peter Jay Fernandez adds immediacy to Crowe's moving prose. "This book is a mandatory addition to all libraries because of the impact and importance this crime had on our history."-School Library Journal