by Marilyn Nelson Emmett Till had a problem with stuttering. When he was young, his mother taught him to whistle when he got nervous and wanted to slow down his speech. In 1955, he took a trip to the south from his home in Chicago, and was accused of whistling at a white woman. He was abducted, brutally beaten, and murdered. When his body was returned home, his mother insisted on an open casket, so the world could see what racism did to her baby. The white men were taken to trial, but acquitted of the crime. They bragged openly about the murder for the rest of their lives.
This is a short, powerful book of sonnets, written in a Heroic Crown, which means the last poem is a poem made of the first line of all the other poems in the book. Invest 15 minutes in this little book. It will touch your heart.
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