Michael_Elliott The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (2005) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Strong documentary taking a look at the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was in Mississippi with relatives when he was kidnapped and brutally murdered after whistling at a white woman. The documentary runs 70-minutes and features interviews with Till's mother, many of his friends and cousins who witnessed the kidnapping as well as a journalist who was covering the trial. This is the second documentary I've seen on the Till killing and it always catches me off guard when I see his mother as well as people who witnessed the crime. This type of event was just so shocking and unbelievable that it's really hard to imagine that this took place not so long ago and it's especially recent when you see so many people from its story are still with us. It's always sad when certain bits of history are forgotten by so many and while I'm far from a history expert I do think that certain stuff (Pearl Harbor, 9/11) are such important events that they need to be remembered. This is such a case because it's not only a matter of Civil Rights but it's also the horrifying fact that a 14-year-old could be beaten and tortured so badly and no one ever paid for it. The recounting of the events are still chilling no matter how many times you hear them and especially the stuff with the mother talking about opening the coffin box and seeing how mutilated her son's face and body was. Graphic photos are shown of the body so people should be warned as the images are just ghastly and it's hard to believe that something like that could happen. THE UNTOLD STORY OF EMMETT LOUIS TILL is a very good documentary taking a look at one of the ugliest crimes in American history. It's certainly worth watching.

Syl The Emmett Till story is really that of an American tragedy. A young man about 14 years old is sent from Chicago to spend summer in Money, Mississippi. He doesn't know how different the South is from Chicago. When he's there, he comes into contact with a white female cashier at the store where he places the money in her hand. Later, he is caught whistling at her. What happens next is horrific to describe. Emmett Till was an only child of a loving mother who had no idea about the tragedy that would occur in taking his life. Not only was Emmett's kidnapping and murder horrific, so is the terrorism that was happening in the South where lynchings, murders, and kidnapping of African American men were happening at an alarming rate. I hope the Emmett Till story and this documentary should be mandatory viewing in every classroom in America to show the hatred, violence, and horror of our history.

groggo Emmett Till, a spirited and happy 14-year-old, left Chicago in 1955 to visit his relatives in northern Mississippi. He never returned. He made the terrible mistake of believing he had the right to behave as a human being, and for that he was ritually slaughtered.The events in Keith Beauchamp's outstanding film, which took nine years to complete, give a terrifying view of barbaric racism in the American deep south. But we must remind ourselves that this was not some distant 19th-century crime, but one that happened a mere 50 years ago. We also must remind ourselves that this was the rule rather than the isolated exception: Emmett's killing was but one of countless atrocities committed against people who happened to be born with a pigmentation that wasn't white, or pink, or beige.We are exposed to ghastly pictures of Emmett in death, and he is no longer human: he resembles instead a butchered animal. The two white men responsible cut out his tongue, chopped off his private parts, split his skull in half with an axe, ripped his eyes out, and, perhaps to ensure over-kill, shot him in the head. This was not mere murder, but pure barbarism carried out amid all the trappings of 'civilized' white society. While the Emmett Tills were being routinely lynched and murdered, white folks gathered over genteel servings of mint juleps. They knew what was happening, did nothing, and in fact deemed it somehow part of 'God's design'.The 'star' of this film is the courageous and noble Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett's mother, who offers profound insights into the grisly details of this case. Rather than bury Emmett quickly in Mississippi, as she was advised to do, Mobley insisted on taking him back to Chicago, and refused to have him 'cosmeticized' in any way by a mortician. She opened his casket to show funeral home visitors the inhuman savagery inflicted on her son. Later, she courageously went to Mississippi for the absurd show trial (the killers were fully exonerated), and she faced a barrage of death threats every step of the way. I'm not sure if they make human beings like Mamie Till-Mobley any more.This film offers close-ups of great human courage. Medger Evers, who was pre-determined for doom (he was to be assassinated eight years later), served as a catalyst for some semblance of justice, and protected Mamie Till-Mobley at the trial in Sumner, Mississippi. Emmett's uncle, the valiant Moses Wright, astonishingly identified the killers in the courtroom, something that meant almost certain death for him. He defiantly did it anyway, and left Mississippi shortly after, vowing never to return. This was a very moving film. I only wish Mamie Till-Mobley had lived long enough to see it. She died of heart and kidney failure in 2002, at the age of 81. When I realized it, I was stunned and saddened. That's how powerful this woman comes through on the screen.This is a superb and necessary film. Be prepared to be shocked, disturbed and outraged.

CIMC The murder of Emmett Louis Till and and subsequent sham of a trial for his murderers were key catalysts for the American civil rights movements. After the brutal lynching, Mamie Till- Mobley put her son in an open casket because she wanted "the world to see what they did to my son." Keith A. Beauchamp's investigative documentary powerfully captures the moment remarkably well, along with posing questions about the continuing lack of justice for Till, and by extension, other victims of racism.Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy when he went to Mississippi to visit his uncle Moses Wright and cousins in 1955. A trip to the grocery store led to Emmett wolf-whistling at shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant. Emmett's cousins took him quickly away from the scene fearing that Mrs. Bryant was going to get a gun. Her husband Roy and his friend J.W. Milam decided that Emmett's action was not only a crime, but a capital offense. Till was taken by the two, in the company of others unnamed, from Wright's house in the middle of the night of 28 August. At some point during the night, Till was killed. His body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River, bound to a cotton bale with barbed wire. After a few days his grossly mutilated body was recovered and after some difficulty, returned to Chicago where it was view in an open casket by thousands of mourners. The graphic photos of Till mutilated corpse shocked much of the nation as much of white America saw images of crimes they were normally able to ignore.Bryant and Milam were caught and put to trial for murder and kidnapping. Despite the NAACP and black newspapers finding several witnesses for the prosecution an all white, all male jury released them after deliberating for less than one hour. Bryant and Milam then proceeded to confess to author William Bradford Huie in national monthly Look, double jeopardy preventing the confessions from being cause for retrial. All this is recounted in a straightforward manner in the film. The case is not an unfamiliar one for people with any interest in civil rights or the history of the civil rights movement and the film presents only a few new insights into the crime itself. One important and depressing fact uncovered by Beauchamp is the participation of a few African-American youths in the original kidnapping, though not the torturing and killing, of Till. Till's surviving cousins relate and react to the information with a visible distaste of knowing something yet not wanting to accept it.Where the film truly succeeds is in composing an understanding of conditions in the South at the time. Mamie Till-Mobley recounts how friends and family in Chicago helped prep the Till boys on how to behave in the South, kind of a How to Survive Amongst Violent Racists course. Reporter Dan Wakefield, who covered the trial for The Nation recalls his surprise not so much at the crime, but at how the people of the town didn't see what the big deal was. Virtually everybody involved expresses something approaching awe for Moses Wright, who fingered Bryant and Milam in their trial. This at a time when testifying against a white man was as dangerous as it was ineffective. More than the narrative of the crime, it is these and other similar details that give us the most insight into the case and the conditions of African- Americans in the US South.The investigation by Mr. Beauchamp has uncovered more participants and led to the Justice Department reopening the case. 50 years is a long time to wait for prosecution given that most figures involved in the case are long dead. It is however, a testament to how profoundly the legacy of Emmett Louis Till resonates today.