« Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins | Main | The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry »
July 27, 2006
A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson and Philippe Lardy
In 1955, people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention. Award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement. This martyr's wreath, woven from a little-known but sophisticated form of poetry, challenges us to speak out against modern-day injustices, to "speak what we see."
Posted by at July 27, 2006 9:19 PM | Emmett Till | Fall 2006
Comments
amazing young man, he died a true hero
Posted by: ily <3~ at February 17, 2009 6:58 PM