A Few Days Full of Trouble : Revelations on the Journey to Justice for My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till

The last surviving witness to the lynching of Emmett Till tells his story, with poignant recollections of Emmett as a boy, critical insights into the recent investigation, and powerful lessons for racial reckoning, both then and now.
 
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • “In this moving and important book, the Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. and Christopher Benson give us a unique window onto the anguished search for justice in a case whose implications shape us still.”—Jon Meacham
 
In 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was lynched. That remains an undisputed fact of the case that ignited a flame within the Civil Rights Movement that has yet to be extinguished. Yet the rest of the details surrounding the event remain distorted by time and too many tellings.

What does justice mean in the resolution of a cold case spanning nearly seven decades? In A Few Days Full of Trouble, this question drives a new perspective on the story of Emmett Till, relayed by his cousin and best friend—the Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., a survivor of the night of terror when young Emmett was taken from his family’s rural Mississippi Delta home in the dead of night.
 
Rev. Parker offers an emotional and suspenseful page-turner set against a backdrop of reporting errors and manipulations, racial reckoning, and political pushback—and he does so accompanied by never-before-seen findings in the investigation, the soft resurrection of memory, and the battle-tested courage of faith. A Few Days Full of Trouble is a powerful work of truth-telling, a gift to readers looking to reconcile the weight of the past with a hope for the future.

Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. is pastor and district superintendent of the Argo Temple Church of God in Christ in Summit, Illinois, the church built by Alma Carthan, grandmother of Emmett Till. A sought-after public speaker, Rev. Parker lectures and teaches on the history of the struggle for equal justice in America. In 2023, he attended the signing of the proclamation establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument as an honored guest of President Joe Biden. He has enjoyed more than fifty years of marriage to his wife, Dr. Marvel Parker.

Christopher Benson—Emmy Award–winning lawyer, journalist, and associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism—co-authored, with the late Mamie Till-Mobley, the Pulitzer Prize–nominated, Robert F. Kennedy Award–winning Death of Innocence. Formerly the Washington editor of Ebony, he has contributed to Chicago magazine, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and The New York Times.