The Untold Story Of Emmett Louis Till Review
By David Kempler
Till Death Do Us Part
"The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" made me realize something. I was someone who prided himself on being up on the history of the United States. This film reminded me yet again just how little I really do know. Like most people I believed that Martin Luther King was the single most important driving force of desegregation in this country, specifically in the Southeast. He may have been, but Mamie Till is at minimum a close second.
On August 21, 1955, twelve year-old Emmett Till was sent by his mother Mamie, to visit family in Money, Mississippi. He stayed at the home of his great uncle Moses Wright. Three days later Emmett went to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market with about seven teenagers. A white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant, owned Bryant's Grocery. They sold primarily to black sharecroppers and their children. Emmett bought bubble gum and according to some whistled at Carolyn Bryant when she walked out of the store. On August 28, in the middle of the night, Roy Bryant and his half brother J. W. Milam kidnapped Emmett Till from Moses Wright's home. They brutally beat him and then killed him and threw the body into the Tallahatchie River, fastened to a large metal fan used for ginning cotton. The body was discovered about seventy-two hours afterwards.
Mississippi officials tried to bury Emmett quickly but Mamie enlisted Chicago officials to help her get her son's body sent to Chicago for burial there. When she saw her son's tortured beyond belief body she insisted on an open casket at the funeral. Thousands stood on line to get a glimpse and the footage of people filing past the body and recoiling in horror and in some cases passing out is extremely powerful.
Bryant and Milam were arrested for the crime. Multiple eyewitnesses testified it was them. The problem was that they were all blacks and the all white jury took an hour to acquit. It wouldn't have taken that long but they wanted it to look like they really deliberated.
Jet magazine, a national black magazine published photographs of Till's mutilated corpse, shocking and outraging African Americans from coast to coast. All over America the news spread. It soon became an international story and propelled the changes that took place in the stormy 1960's.
Keith Beauchamp spent nine years gathering information and footage for this film, and because of his efforts the case has now been reopened. Unfortunately, Bryant and Milam are dead now and cannot be made to face the music. Years ago they sold their confession to the crime to Look Magazine. But others involved are still alive and there is no statute of limitations on murder. Because Beauchamp uncovered new facts about the case, that material had to be pulled from the film and used as evidence. This resulted in the film being only seventy minutes in length and a little disjointed and confusing to watch. When the new trial is completed I assume another more comprehensive version will be released. That might end up a great film.
