Till: An Incredible Story of a Mother's Love & Courage

Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till-Mobley’s relentless pursuit of justice for her 14 year old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie’s poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother’s ability to change the world.

The film provides a peek into moments during Mamie & Emmett's day to day to life.

Moments of Love.

Moments of Laughter.

Moments of Singing.

Moments of Dancing.

All of which floods my mind with memories of my own life with my Mom.

Very early in the film, Mamie expresses to her son, "They have a different set of rules down in Mississippi. You have to be careful! Bo, be small!" My eyes began to tear up.

You see, I have had these same conversations with my own Mom; growing up in South Carolina where members of the KKK were your local drugstore owners, your taxi drivers, and yes - your police officers.

One of Mamie’s first lessons in racial injustice was over a roll of toilet paper.

Vanessa Pius explains in her post, 12 Things You Might Not Know About Mamie Till-Mobley , on a family trip from Chicago to Mississippi when Mamie was 12, she noticed that her grandparents used the Sears, Roebuck, & Co. catalog as toilet paper. She went to the local white-owned drugstore to buy them some real toilet paper, but the owner refused to sell her any, suggesting they use corncobs like everyone else.

Mamie was preparing to say something when her grandfather walked in and escorted her out. According to her autobiography, “he pounded the fear of every Black person in the state of Mississippi into [her].”

For the first time, she appreciated the liberty she enjoyed back in Chicago.

"In Mississippi, there were certain things that Black people were denied by white people. The freedom of movement. The luxury of choice. And a roll of toilet paper." Mamie Till-Mobley

Before Emmett's trip, Mamie sat him down and told him how to behave in front of white people. It was the first time she recalled talking to her son explicitly about race, and she could tell he wasn’t entirely sold. In her autobiography, she reflected, “How do you give a crash course in hatred to a boy who has only ever known love?”

This is the lived experience of EVERY Black Mother and EVERY Black Father in America.

Mamie instructed Emmett to always say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” when talking to white people, and to step off the sidewalk if a white woman was walking toward him, making sure to lower his head until she passed. She told him to get on his knees in deference if he had to.

You might be thinking, well this was 67 years ago; that isn't the America of today.

One only needs to look at our everyday interactions to know this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, just seven (7) years ago, Jose Antonio Vargas documents the viewpoint of young white people living in America in his documentary, White People . Not at all surprising, Vargas brings up a point made in one of the conversations where young white people were told if there’s a Black person walking down the street, they should go the other way. A young white woman in the documentary explains, ?“I would honestly say I’ve done that before…It was that bad part of you that thinks something bad. Would I do that now? Never.”

The fact that it still happens is all one needs to know about how far, or not, we've come to viewing people like me, Black people, as human and non-threatening.

As the true story of Till unfolds, Till is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman (Carolyn Bryant). His assailants—the white woman’s husband and his brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

Mamie fought hard to see Emmett’s body — and let others see him.

When Emmett’s body arrived in Chicago, the box was locked with the seal of the state of Mississippi. Mamie learned that undertakers on both ends, and her own relatives, had signed papers agreeing to keep the box sealed, which would have covered up the extreme violence of the crime. Mamie fought tooth and nail for the Chicago undertaker to open the box, and when she finally saw her son, she knew immediately they had to have an open casket funeral.

Emmett was maimed nearly beyond recognition — his killers had continued to assault him long after his death. Mamie famously insisted, “Let the world see what I’ve seen.”

The response was immediate. The family postponed Emmett’s burial by four days while tens of thousands of people filed past his open casket. Nurses were on hand to help the many who fainted — according to Mamie, one in five mourners needed physical assistance. Jet magazine published photos of Emmett’s body, forcing Americans around the country to reckon with the violent realities of racism.

Less than two weeks after Emmett’s body was buried, Milam and Bryant went on trial in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. There were few witnesses besides Mose Wright, who positively identified the defendants as Emmett’s killers.

On September 23, the all-white jury deliberated for less than an hour before issuing a verdict of “not guilty,” explaining that they believed the state had failed to prove the identity of the body. Many people around the country were outraged by the decision and also by the state’s decision not to indict Milam and Bryant on the separate charge of kidnapping.

Carolyn Bryant Confesses

The Emmett Till murder trial brought to light the brutality of?Jim Crow segregation ?in the South and was an early impetus of the?civil rights movement .

In 2017, Tim Tyson, author of the book?The Blood of Emmett Till, revealed that Carolyn Bryant recanted her testimony, admitting that Till had never touched, threatened or harassed her. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she said.?In 2022, a grand jury in Mississippi?declined to indict ?Bryant for her role in the crime nearly 70 years earlier.?

Whoopi Goldberg has worked for over ten (10) years to bring this story to life on the silver screen.

In March of 2022, President Joe Biden signed the?Emmett Till Antilynching Act ?into law, making lynching a federal hate crime.?

Mamie continued speaking throughout the country until her death in 2003, connecting with mothers of other slain Black children and making sure no one ever forgot her son’s story.

She closes her autobiography by writing, “Although I have lived so much of my life without Emmett, I have lived my entire life?because?of him.”

Till opens nationwide in theaters October 28, 2022.

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