Chris Everett Crowe was born on May 28, 1954, in Danville, Illinois. When Chris was a child his father's job caused him to move often, so he and his family lived in various places over the course of his juvenile years. He attended Brigham Young University with a football scholarship. His passion for writing and english resulted in him graduating with an english degree. He soon began his teaching career at various high schools. He earned his doctorate in English and went to go teach at a university in Japan. He also taught at a university in Hawaii, but he currently teaches at a BYU in Provo, Utah. He married his high school sweetheart, they have four children, and five grandchildren.
Emmett was killed one year before Crowe was born. Despite the national coverage the case received, neither of his parents had any knowledge of the boy's murder. Crowe depicts that schools should teach their students about Emmett Till and his tragic murder. Through all of his years in school, he never once learned about Till. He discovered Emmett Till when he was writing a book about a famous author, Mildred D. Taylor. She had written a paper on the murder of Emmett, so Crowe decided to do some further research on
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So many Blacks were killed before Emmett, but once the media began to get involved with the murders, the Civil Rights Movement began to form. An NAACP officer said, "I think sometimes that the hand of God was in the whole thing. White men had been killing Black boys down here for years without making much of a fuss. The Emmett Till case became a cog in the wheel of change. Perhaps we have television to thank for that. Television and the printed media turned the spotlight on Mississippi." This quote sums up the whole social media theme in the book. Once the media was informed about the killing, and enough people became enraged, things started to change. We all have the media to thank for the 360 change in the segregation