Customer Reviews

Getting Away with Murder (Jane Addams Honor Book (Awards))

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I do recommend this book because there is still racism in the United States of America today and many people need to stop because nobody wants to be insulted because of there race. The books plot was how people were treated back in the 1940's and 50's and gave me many reasons why not to be a racist. I would not like to read another book by Chris Crowe again because this book was extremely sad. This book is perfect for people that are trying to improve themselves and are trying to put themselves in someone else's shoes way back when.

This book is a very good buy and very interesting read. This book follows a young boy named Emmett Till. This book is based on real facts and was considered the cause of the beggnining of the civil rights movement. This read will not only give you real facts and info, but will bring a tear to your eye and really think about what life was like during this time period.

Book was received quickly and in excellent condition. Story is an engrossing tale of the abuse of civil rights in the 1950s and '60s.

My son was assigned in 8th Grade Language Arts class to read any book on the subject of Emmett Till's death. He reported that this book was a good non-fiction read and presented the facts in a balanced manner. He highly recommends that if any other middle-schooler has a similar assignment, that they pick this book to read.

The story of Emmett Till is one that everyone needs to hear. It is a little-known story of a black boy from Chicago that is murdered in Mississippi on 1955 for whistling at a white woman while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. He was fourteen years old and unfamiliar with the Jim Crow Laws of the South. Chris Crowe is able to put together an eye-opening book about Emmett and the facts of his murder, the trial, and the events of the Civil Rights Movement that soon follow. This book may take readers out of their safe comfort zone of the current times, but tells a true story of a young boy that died at the hands of adults because of the color of his skin.

This book received the IRA's children Book Award and was a Jane Addams Honor Book.

In the classroom this book could be used to teach research, how to find reliable sources, and how pull research together, as well as to introduce the Civil Rights movement into a unit of study.

Chris Crowe is an English professor of young adult literature at Brigham Young University. He became interested in Emmett Till when writing a book about Mildred D. Taylor. She had written about Emmett in one of her essays. He followed up on Emmett and was able to tell his story.

If you were approached on the street, by a stranger and asked, what did Emmett Till due to shape the world today? What would you respond. Most people would not know how to answer it due to they don't know who he is in the first place. But it would be a different story if you were asked what Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. did. Your answer would most likely and should be around help gain equality for all races. But little do people know that what sparked that fire was Emmett Till.
In the summer of 1955 two white males, Milam and Bryant demanded to be let into a shack occupied by Emmett Till and his Uncle's family. They then kidnapped Emmett, a fourteen year old African American boy from Chicago, tortured and eventually killed him. Several weeks later a fisherman found his body reported it. During the trial Milam and Bryant plead guilty to kidnapping but not to murder. Then from a jury of 12 white males they were found not guilty and let go of the murder of Emmett Till. "This is not a trial of racism or equality, this is trial or the murder of a boy" this was said by Milam and Bryant's Attorney. This was supposed to be the views of everyone in the courtroom for the trial of Emmett Till. But as you read in the book you'll see that this was nearly the case, Due to Emmett African background they didn't consider his murder as severe as of the murder of a white boy.
This book won't be for all readers such as those that read for fun or just to pass the time. It's more targeted for those who like know what caused the civil equality and times views have changed over time due to the author being somewhat of a omnisnt narrator, over viewing the whole case but from a bit of a bias stand point leaning to the unjust side. The views shift from the white Americans, to African Americans point of view but stays most on the injustice of the judicial system of the white America in the mid 1900's. But overall it add knowledge to the reason of how America came to be America.

How can the death of one black boy spur on an era of change in the U.S.? The book Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crowe takes an in-depth look at the murder case that helped spur on the Civil Rights Movement. The case of the murder of a fourteen year old black boy from the North in Mississippi in 1955 helped to solidify the resolve of African Americans around the country to fight for change. While many of us have been taught that it was Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus that got the Civil Rights era rolling, Crowe works to prove that it was actually the murder of this young boy that began the movement to end segregation in America. This event is often overlooked or barely mentioned in history classes. This book looks at Tills's murder, the trial that followed, and the resulting shockwaves sent out by the results of the trial.

What makes this book so good is the fact that it places the reader right into the event itself by using actual accounts of the events and trial. Thanks in part to the use of period photographs, one can image oneself at the store where Till was accused of whistling at a white women, at the murder scene itself, and inside the court room during the trial. It is hard to not be wrapped up in the events when you can see and "hear," through actual accounts, what is transpiring in the story. The book sets the stage for Till's murder by explaining the conditions in the South at the time, then takes the reader step by step through the events of the murder, trial, and the trial's aftermath.

Take a trip back in time and decide for yourself if Till's murder truly began the Civil Rights Movement. Feel the heartbreak of a mother who lost her only son, see the photograph that shocked Americans, and make sure that Till's story is no longer overlooked.

Getting Away with Murder by Chris Crowe
I thought this book was very interesting because it gave a good description about Emmett Till being brutally murdered in Flint, Mississippi. This whole situation started because of segregation down south in Mississippi. This incident contributed to the Civil Rights Movement. J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant at first were not accused of committing murder; they later confessed that they murdered Emmet Till. This book gave me facts that I did not know because at first I did not know who Emmet Till was until I read this book. I think this book should be permitted to read all around the word because this is what led to equal rights for African Americans.

I am not really big on non-fiction. Most of it feels like reading a text book. However, I decided to read Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crowe because of a book talk my Young Adult Literature Teacher gave on it and because one of my requirements for this class was to read a non fiction young adult book. I was pleasantly surprised. It gives a window into the Southern Culture and Racism of the 1950's without feeling like a textbook. If there is any question if racism actually existed, it is proved in this book.
I thought it is very well written for young adults because of things it contains that make the story real and personal. First, the author uses interviews and court records to tell what happened, so the reader can enjoy a lot of first hand accounts of the events that took place. The book is also filled with many pictures of Emmett, his mother, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant (the men who killed Emmett), and pictures of places where different events happened. These pictures of actual people and places help the reader realize that these were actual events, not just stories. The author also shows how the event of the murder of Emmett Till related to the civil rights movement. This adds more significance to the events, and also imparts more knowledge to the reader who may not know a lot about this time period. I think it is a great read for teens of all ages, and adults too. Anyone who would like to learn more about what segregation and racism was about, or are just interested in the civil rights era, will enjoy this book. I definitely plan on sharing this book with my children!

This book brings to mind an old saying:
"That which is probable is the greatest enemy to truth."


Theoretically, Getting Away with Murder could be used in classrooms as a history text as well as a model of research techniques. However, Professor Crowe clearly did not know Emmett Till's full story, and he filled in the blanks of his research with his own assumptions about what PROBABLY happened.

Crowe failed to critically analyze previously published material on the matter. He also missed an opportunity to introduce young people to the real Emmett Till -- the fun-loving, 14-year-old at the center of the most infamous act of racial violence in U.S. history.

Regardless of the prose and photos, in order to succeed, a book - any book - must finally deliver the truth. That's actually harder to do in a work of nonfiction than in a novel. One cannot objectively check the facts in a novel, any more than one can objectively judge the colors in a painting. But the facts in Crowe's colorful account of Emmett Till's story are verifiable.

In many instances, Crowe's facts are wrong.

Along with several arguably minor factual errors and name misspellings, Crowe's nonfiction narrative includes two major falsehoods: the claim that Curtis Jones accompanied Till on his train ride (pages 35, 47, 55), and the assertion that Jones was an eyewitness to Till's alleged "wolf whistle" toward Carol Bryant (page 55). Jones publicly recanted his statements in 1985, almost twenty years prior to Professor Crowe's publication.

Significantly, other than Jones, Carol Bryant is the only adult who claimed Till made the lewd remarks and whistles that later led her husband to seek revenge. Carol Bryant's testimony is questionable, since her tale changed and grew over time.

Of course, legally, the truth about Till's behavior is not even at issue. But socially and culturally, the "wolf whistle" is central to this story. It goes to the truth of Emmett Till's character.

In Crowe's story, "the boy who triggered the civil rights movement" was playing with fire. Crowe first admits "it's impossible to know exactly what was said or done in a small country store some fifty years ago," but then says the "evidence suggests" Emmett Till was guilty of disrespecting the White female - an offense which, for a Black man in 1950s Mississippi, was considered by many to be a capital crime. In the court of public opinion -- if you play with fire, you get burned.

In truth, there is no evidence to prove, nor any reason to believe Emmett Till let out with a suggestive "wolf whistle," or that the happy-go-lucky boy threatened Carol Bryant in any way.

Crowe has built his narrative on rumors and reports which characterized Till as an uppity Black from the North, unaware that his boldness would get him killed in the Deep South. Those were lies, yet Professor Crowe writes of Till's "cocky and naive indiscretion in Money, Mississippi."

Getting Away with Murder also uncritically includes the two confessed killers' outrageous depiction of their victim as combative and relentlessly mouthy throughout the kidnapping, torture and killing. Chris Crowe's implication, that Till showed heroic resolve by repeatedly standing up to his abusers, is a clumsy cultural misstep, and a factual improbability. Most importantly, such behavior is inconsistent with the upbringing, good sense, and true character of Emmett Louis Till.