Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. & Christopher Benson - "A Few Days Full of Trouble"

Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. & Christopher Benson will discuss their book A Few Days Full of Trouble.

Presented in partnership with the American Writers Museum. 

This event will be held in person at The American Writers Museum. 

Register HERE.

About the book: In 1955, Emmett Till was lynched when he was fourteen years old. 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.

In a hypnotic interplay between uncovered facts and vivid recall, 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.

About the authors: 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. 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.