Getting Away With Murder Research Paper

In the book, Getting Away With Murder by Chris Crowe, racism was acted on by a 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till who was gruesomely beaten to death by two supposed Ku Klux Klan members, Roy Bryant and J.W. “Big” Milam. One day Emmett Till supposedly was dared to go into Bryant's Grocery and “go get a date with her” (Crowe 51). That woman was Mrs. Carolyn Bryant, the wife to Emmett’s murderer, Roy Bryant. Emmett had also apparently whistled at her. This infuriated Roy Bryant. Bryant went to Emmett’s great-uncle, Mose Wright’s house and grabbed Emmett from the house. Then he proceeded to bring him to a local friend’s barn and beat him to death. This is what led to the death of Emmett Till. The following statement is by Roy Bryant and his

racist code of the south “As a racist white southerner, he expected blacks to know their Jim Crowe place especially when it came to white women. I gotta go over there and whip that niggah” (Crowe 57-58). Whites called blacks the n-word as a way to keep them under them. Down in the south blacks were expected to abide by a racist law and do nothing about it. This quote explains racism in the south because they could be treated however they wanted by whites. It seemed that that time in history it was just a way of life. But that doesn't mean it's ok. The autopsy report stated, “One side of the victim’s forehead was crushed, an eye had been gouged out, a bullet hole just above the ear. Body swollen to almost twice its normal size,”(Crowe 64) Sure Emmett had whistled and flirted with a white woman and that's against the law. But death does not justify what he did. Maybe a whipping would do, but no one really knows for sure. His death lit the fuse that would pave the way for one of the most monumental movements ever to be performed, the Civil Rights Movement.