The true story ofEmmett Tilland his mother’s fight for justice after his murder is being retold in an emotional new film.
On Monday, MGM Studios debuted the first trailer forTill, which is about the 1955 lynching of a 14-year-old boy, Emmett, in Mississippi.
Emmett, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when a white woman (Carolyn Bryant Donham, then 21) falsely accused him of whistling at her and attempting to grab her hand and waist while inside a grocery store.
Days later, Emmett was kidnapped from a relative’s home, beaten severely and mutilated before being shot. A large metal fan was then tied to his neck with barbed wire and his body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River.
Donham’s husband at the time, Roy Bryant, and Bryant’s half-brother, J.W. Milam, were tried for Emmett’s murder, and an all-white jury acquitted them in September 1955 after an hour of deliberations. In a magazine interview after the trial, both menadmitted killing the boy.
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Till(2022).MGM Studios
Emmett’s death served as acatalyst for the civil-rights movement, and his momMamie Till-Mobleyfamously insisted on an open-casket funeral because “I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy.”
In 2007, Donham recanted part of her story, telling Timothy B. Wilson for his bookThe Blood of Emmett Tillthat the teen never touched her or harassed her verbally.
Tillalso starsWhoopi Goldbergand Frankie Faison. Actor Jalyn Hall plays Emmett, whileHaley Bennettplays Donham.
Director Chinonye Chukwu explained during a press conference Thursday, according toEntertainment Weekly, that the filmmakers wanted to “keep [the story] focused on Mamie and her relationship with Emmett” and were careful not to “re-traumatize audiences or myself.”
Chukwu also said it was “important” to the project “that we see, feel and hear [Emmett] be a boy before what would inevitably happen to him.”
source: people.com
