Crowe manages to cover information provided from most of the major primary sources, complete with quotes and photographs. It gives all of the basic facts in an easy to understand way, without ever making the audience feel talked down to. While this book is a young adult non-fiction work, it definitely felt suitable for adults and teenagers alike. I have been curious for a long time about learning more on the Emmett Till case, and I feel like I have done myself a disservice by taking so long to pick up a book on the topic. I had been familiar with the case prior to picking this up at the library, but I had done no more than read the occasional article about it or relating to it.

It feels like more important information than ever to receive right now.

Getting Away With Murder is an excellent and thorough overview of the Emmett Till case. 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. 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. It was a galvanizing moment for Black leaders and ordinary citizens, including such activists as Rosa Parks. Although the two white men were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, they later bragged publicly about the crime. 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. Three days later his brutally beaten body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River. Likely showing off to friends, Emmett allegedly whistled at a white woman. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was visiting family in a small town in Mississippi during the summer of 1955.

The kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till is famous as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.

Getting Away with Murder by Chris Crowe