The Murder of Emmett Till
The Murder of Emmett Till(2003)This episode of the PBS American Experience series profiles one of the most shocking racially motivated murders in U.S. history. In 1955, when the Civil Rights Movement was struggling for wider public recognition, a young teenage African American traveled from his home in Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi. It was his first time in the South, his first encounter with the unwritten laws of Jim Crow.
After Emmett whistled at the wife of a White storeowner, he was abducted at gunpoint from the home of his relatives, brutally beaten, and shot in the head. His gruesomely swollen body was later discovered in a nearby river. The men who killed him were charged with his murder but acquitted by the all-White jury. The crime and the subsequent trial horrified American public opinion and drew the attention of journals from across the U.S. and the world. This film gives a powerful account of a murder that helped to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.
The Murder of Emmett Till is exceptionally moving and memorable. The film wisely eschews preachy sentimentality, letting its incisive account exerts an emotional pull on its own. Though its presentation style is very traditional—reliance of black-and-white archival photographs and film footage, explanations provided by voice-over narration punctuated by on-screen commentators—these are very well done. The black-and-white images have lost none of their power with time. The narrator is acclaimed actor Andre Braugher, who avoids an emotional approach in favor of a matter-of-fact reading that is both effectual and empathetic. Perhaps most effective (and affecting) is the on-screen commentary from Till’s mother, who five decades later recalls the pain she felt by the murder of her son and the injustice of the trial of his murderers.
The total running time is just under 60 minutes. The film could fit into one full class period in most secondary or college classrooms. It is well worth using as a reminder of the role that racial violence played in the Civil Rights Movement, the coverage of which is too frequently sanitized and rendered tranquilly sanctified in textbooks and curriculum. However, the film is not recommended for audiences younger than 9th grade—the images of Till’s corpse and the descriptions of his brutal murder are very disturbing, even more than 50 years later.
Scott Metzger Pennsylvania State University sam59@psu.edu
