Watch The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till For Free

Such a frustrating disappointment

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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.

To filmteknik (I think that was the commenter's name -- sorry if I got it wrong). In response to your question about the store and the gun, I've read several different accounts of the Emmett Till story on the internet, and not one is exactly the same. There seem to be about 30 different versions of it. They all have the main information correct, but the details are different. I read at least 5 different versions of what happened when Emmett was at the store, so maybe we'll never really know the truth.I noticed that the brutality of the beating has been played down on the internet too. Most say he was beaten and shot, then tied to a fan with barbed wire. The film went into much more detail. It told of the men splitting his head with an axe, cutting off his penis, breaking out all but two of his teeth, gouging his eye, and more.There are also different versions of the number of people involved.The other thing that puzzled me is that one account says that Emmett was killed when he was shot in the head at the river. Yet, the film says he had his head split in two and was also shot in the head. So I don't know what was the actual cause of death.Whatever the correct story is, we do know that he did something harmless and was kidnapped and brutally murdered for it.

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.

Most people probably know the story of Emmett Till, the black teen brutally tortured and murdered in 1950's Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. If not and you have the opportunity to see this documentary you by all means should as everyone should know this story. In a nutshell, Till's murder gave impetus to the struggle for equality and thus is an important part of American history over the last half century. (The killers were acquitted but later admitted their guilt in a magazine interview. They have since died. At this writing the Feds have reopened the case to possibly bring others to justice.)However, despite the compelling story from a film standpoint this is only a so-so documentary and it leaves the viewer wondering about a few things.MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW Some questions raised but not answered: What actually happened when Emmett went into the Bryants' store? Certainly Mrs. Bryant's testimony at trial was BS. But according to this documentary when she emerged from the store and went to the car after Emmett went in to buy bubblegum all the black kids were saying she was going to the car to get a gun kept there. It was at this point that Emmett wolf-whistled at her. If up until this moment nothing offensive had happened why did they all think she was going for her gun? I'm confused by this.The documentary states that after the remains arrived in Chicago they were forbidden to open the box. Forbidden by whom? The film doesn't say. (They opened it anyway.) Another example of sloppy film-making is near the beginning when Emmett is heading to visit the relatives in Mississippi. Mrs. Till (who is very eloquent and well spoken, by the way) describes going to 12th Street Station with Emmett. This is almost certainly a reference to the Illinois Central's Central Station which was located on Chicago's lake front at 12th St. IC was an important rail link between Chicago and the south and Central was their Chicago terminus. Central Station was a very large, rather ugly big city train station with a clock tower and was razed around 1973 or so. The filmmakers illustrate this event by showing what is probably stock footage of some random small town train station. A little research and they could have shown the real thing.