"A Crime That's So Unjust!" Chris Crowe Tells About the Death of Emmett Till

ALAN Review, Spring 2003 by Blasingame, Jim

JB: There is more going on with your characters in Mississippi Trial than just the story that people could have read in the news. What did you mean for your characters to show about the human experience?

CC: I suppose I was thinking most about Hiram Hillburn, my narrator. In many ways, mainly the cowardly ways, Hiram is a lot like I was when I was a teenager. Hiram's oblivious to the racism around, oblivious to the goodness of his own father, oblivious to the unsavory qualities of many of the people he thinks he admires. Hiram was a racist without being aware of it. He also was a part of an intergenerational family conflict. Hiram hates his father. Hiram's father hates his father. As I said, some of this comes from my own teen years. When I was in high school, I didn't get along very well with my own father, and it was my fault. After I got married, and especially after I had kids of my own, I realized what a dope I had been, and I regretted that I hadn't made a better effort at understanding Dad when I was a teenager. Anyway, my dad died while I was working on Mississippi Trial, 1955, and that caused me to reflect a lot on what my relationship had been with him and what I wish it had been.

One of the nice things about fiction is that it gives you a chance to work out some angst, and that's what I did through Hiram. I knew that this novel couldn't be about the Emmett Till case - it had to be a story that stood on its own, a story affected by the case rather than about the case. For Hiram, I wanted it to be a story of reconciliation; I wanted him to come to see his father in a new light, and I wanted him to learn about racism and how evil it is. Having him get caught up in the Emmett Till case provided the catalyst for both those lessons to take place.

So, I wanted Hiram to learn that our perceptions of others aren't always accurate. I wanted him to learn that people he loves can still do bad things. I wanted him to face something really scary and find the courage to do what was right, even if he didn't want to. I guess those are the same things I wish I would have learned when I was 16.

JB: Both books required an enormous amount of research (over 50 sources in the bibliography of Getting Away with Murder), and the facts you uncovered were hardly benign. As you were searching for Emmett's story what was going on with you on a personal level? What experiences along the way most affected you?

CC: The research was both fascinating and agonizing. I learned facts about the case, of course, but I also learned an awful lot about the Jim Crow South and many of the terrible things that happened following the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court. I'd never realized how that decision had inflamed the South. So the educational part of the research was fascinating. But it was agonizing because much of what I was reading and writing about was so awful. Emmett wasn't the only African American murdered in Mississippi in 1955, and reading about the hate and violence that was erupting then made me feel awful.