The Murder of Emmett Till (2003)

Directed by

Stanley Nelson Jr.

Genre

documentary

Country

United States

Runtime

53 min

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 6 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary recounts the 1955 lynching of a 14 year old black boy in Mississippi. It shows how his mother's decision for an open casket funeral galvanized the Civil Rights Movement.

somberdisturbinghistoricalreflectiverawinfuriatingeducationalsobering

What happens

The Murder of Emmett Till is a 2003 documentary film produced by Firelight Media that aired on the PBS program American Experience. The film chronicles the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955. He was brutally murdered by two white men after an interaction with the white wife of one of them. Emmett's mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on a public funeral with an open casket. Photos of the decaying and mutilated body flooded newspapers, putting the case on the map both nationally and internationally. The two men accused of his murder were acquitted after a short five-day trial with an all-white male jury, making a mockery of any possibility of justice. Shortly afterward, the defendants sold their story to journalists detailing how they carried out the murder. The Emmett Till case was a significant motivator of the Civil Rights Movement, and the Montgomery bus boycott began three months after his body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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