Chapter 8 Selection: A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955 while in Mississippi visiting relatives.  The impetus for his murder was that he allegedly whistled at a white woman.  He husband and brother-in-law then took Emmett from his uncle's home and brutally murdered him.  His mother held an open casket funeral for her son in his hometown of Chicago so that the world could see what the men had done to her son.  An all white, all male jury found then men not guilty, despite his uncle's eye witness identification. After the trial, one of the two acquitted men told a reporter how they had killed Emmett and identified three other men who were involved. This travesty of justice was a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

Marilyn Nelson was nine years old Emmett Till was lynched.  She wanted to write a about his lynching for young people, young people who were the same age Emmett was at the time of this murder. Nelson chose to write a heroic crown of sonnets to honor Till.  She chose to use the form of the Petrarchan sonnet, a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter with an abbacddcefgefg rhyme scheme. The crown of sonnets is made up of fifteen poems.  For the first fourteen poems, the last line of one poem becomes the first line of the next (although the lines are sometimes slightly altered).  The final poem of the crown is composed of the first lines of the previous fourteen sonnets.  The first letter of each line of this final poem also spells out the name Emmett Till.  This heroic crown of sonnets became the book A Wreath for Emmett Till, both a Coretta Scott King and a Michael Printz Award Honor book.  Nelson explains the format for the sonnets in an introduction to the book.

While the poems themselves tell much about Emmett Till's story, Nelson also includes additional information about his life and death in a section at the end of the book titled "Who Was Emmett Till?" Nelson also includes "Sonnet Notes" that provide details about allusions used in the poems, as well as explaining the meaning and intent in the poems.  This information would be invaluable for a teacher using the book in class or for a student reading the book independently.  Finally, the illustrator, Phillipe Lardy, includes an "Artist's Note," explaining his inspiration for the illustrations and symbolism used and its relationship to the poems.  Finally, the author includes a list of references for further information on Emmett Till's murder.

As an English teacher, I can easily see using this powerful set of poems in a unit on poetry.  The poems demonstrate a specific poetic form, but also offer examples of rhyme and rhyme scheme, rhythm, allusion, symbolism, simile, personification, and many more poetic devices.  The book could also be used in a US history class during a study of the civil rights movement.  In fact, the book could be used as a common text in a collaboration between an English class and a history class  The collaboration could also pull in an art class as well to look at the style of the illustrations, as well as the use of symbolism and the relation of the illustrations to the text.

References

Nelson, M. (2005). A wreath for Emmett Till. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.