Till- Movie

1955-2022

TILL→

just a movie on

It is based on the story of Mamie Till-Bradley, mother of Emmett, a 14-year-old boy murdered for racial reasons in 1955

a terrible true

their background

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago Illinois. He was raised by his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, after his parents separated. Mamie was very protective of Emmett, who grew up in a northern, urban environment far removed from the deeply segregated South

His life before the incident

1941

and his half-brother J.W. William, abducted Emmett from his great-uncle Mose Wright's home in the night. the two men brutally beat him,, gouged out one of his eyes, shot him in the head and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River, weiighted down with a cotton gin fan

Carolyn's husband, Roy..

Four days later

On August

to visit his relatives. On the 24 of that month while at Bryant's Grocery Market. He allegedly interacted with the cashier, Carolyn, in a way that was pereived as inappropiate by the strict racial custom of the Jim Crow South

He traveled to Money (MS)

1955

Despite strong evidence, including eyewitness testimony from Emmett's uncle, Mose Wright, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted both men after deliberating for just over an hour.

Justice for my boy

The disfigurated body of Emmett was discovered. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were arrested and charged with murder. Their trial in September 1955 in Sumner, Mississippi, became a national spectacle.

ON AUGUST 31, 1955

Months later, Bryant and Milam admitted to the murder in an interview with Look magazine, knowing they could not be retried due to double jeopardy laws.

The trial

Reinvestigation: The case was reopened in 2004, and in 2007, Carolyn Bryant admitted to fabricating parts of her testimony. However, no new charges were filed.

THE IMPORTANCE IT HAS TODAY

Open Casket Funeral: Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago, allowing the world to see her son's mutilated body. Photographs published in Jet magazine and other outlets galvanized public outrage.

IMPACT AND LEGACY

predictable

ONGOING

Although this very violent practice seems to have fallen into disuse especially since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the American political world had never been able to legislate it.

RELEVANCE

CIVIL RIGHTS

The murder of Emmett Till a rallying cry for the civil rights movement. Figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. cited the incident as a motivating force behind their activism.

MOVEMENT

2022

the end

See ya!

thank you

for paying attention

“I can't breathe” is now a slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.

I can't breathe!!

photo source: NBC News

A connection in the film to real life was made in this scene in which the mother Mamie at the sight of the box (in which her dead son was) screaming in despair out of pain such words, similar to what were the last words of Eric Garner, an unarmed man killed in 2014 after being choked by a New York City police officer.