November 13, 2022 – The civil rights mantra that “Black Lives Matter” has been around for over 100 years in America, but the seminal BLM event was the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till (played by Jalyn Hall of “Space Jam: A New Legacy”) in 1955. It marked one of the most important events in the American Civil Rights movement.

Till's murder led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott that same year (Rosa Parks attended a rally for Till shortly before she sparked the boycott) and it eventually led to the signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act this year by President Joe Biden.

This movie is about Till's murder, but it is even more about Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley (played by Danielle Deadwyler of “The Harder They Fall”). She forced the nation to take notice of the kidnapping, torture, mutilation and murder of her son. She fought hard against those who tried to cover up, forget, or justify Emmett's murder.

The story begins just before Emmett leaves Chicago to visit friends and relatives in Money, Mississippi. Mamie had left Mississippi to seek work in Chicago, and to escape the horrors of the Jim Crow South. She was reluctant to allow Emmett to go to Mississippi because of the danger.

She warned Emmett about the strange social rules in the south, that he would have to act subserviently to white people if he was to avoid danger. Emmett, however, was a carefree boy who liked to have fun, and was not careful about what he said. He allegedly whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant (played by Haley Bennett of “Swallow”). When Carolyn's husband found out about Emmett's behavior towards his wife, he, and others, abducted Emmett and killed him.

Of course, those who killed Emmett were acquitted of murder charges by an all-white Mississippi jury. A year later, in 1956, the two acquitted killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam admitted that they had tortured and murdered Till, but were never held accountable for the crime. Years later, Carolyn Bryant admitted that she exaggerated details about her encounter with Till to make it seem like Till was a sexual aggressor.

Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley (AKA Mamie Till-Bradley, her given name before marrying Gene Mobley in 1957) was not going to let the jury in Mississippi, and the conspiracy stories that her son was still alive, to stop her. She became a national civil rights speaker, traveling around the country speaking on behalf of her son, and for civil rights. She was a “Black Lives Matter” leader in her time.

After Emmett's murder, Mamie refused to allow his body to be buried, or the funeral held, in Mississippi. She insisted that Emmett's body be returned to Chicago. She insisted that the public be allowed to see, and photograph, Emmett's mutilated body. She insisted that his casket lay open during the funeral services.

Southern racists were horrified that their inhumanity was thus exposed. They claimed the corpse was a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) conspiracy. They deflected the issue by attacking the moral standing of Mamie and Emmett, and by promoting the conspiracy story that the mutilated body at Till's funeral actually belonged to someone else. This is not unlike the dehumanizing deflections made by Republican politicians and others, including Elon Musk, following a violent attack against Paul Pelosi, husband of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Fighting back against all this was Emmett Till's mother, Mamie. At first, she was just defending her son, but eventually, she saw this battle as part of a bigger war for human rights in America, and she went to work on that. On her side was the NAACP, including Medger Evers (Tosin Cole of “Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens”) who was the Mississippi state field secretary for the NAACP in 1955.

Evers himself would be assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963. Martin Luther King was among those leading the protest march after Evers was murdered. King himself would be assassinated in 1968. The killings of Till, Evers and King, and many others who have been killed by white supremacists in the civil rights movement are among the unpleasant facts of history that white leaders are working to keep out of U.S. schools.

As a nation, we have come a long way from 1955 in terms of civil rights for black Americans, but we still have a long way to go. Item: On November 8, 2022, voters in Louisiana voted to reject a poorly-worded amendment to the state's constitution that would have outlawed slavery for convicted criminals. On the same day, voters in Alabama, Tennessee and Vermont Vermont approved similar anti-slavery measures, closing an often-used loophole in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution allowing convicted criminals to be treated as slaves.

Whites are still killing unarmed blacks in alarming numbers, some states are making it harder for blacks to vote by passing targeted restrictive voting laws, politicians using appeals to white supremacists are still being elected, racial disparities in housing, lending and employment are still common, and we still can't even seem to completely eliminate slavery itself.

After all these years, the lessons of Emmett Till's death in 1955 still fall on deaf ears, and that makes the tragedy even more tragic. His killers never faced justice. Despite all that, millions of Americans want to bring back the “good old days” of 1955, despite all the tragic baggage that brings with it.

In this historical drama, Danielle Deadwyler brings Mamie Till-Mobley vividly to life. The superb cast includes John Carthan (who plays Mamie Till's father) John Douglas Thompson, (who plays the guilt-ridden Moses Wright, from whose home Till was abducted) and Sean Patrick Thomas as Gene Mobley, Mamie's frustrated romantic friend Mamie keeps deliberately at arm's length because of the attacks on her character.

The screenplay, by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp and Chinonye Chukwu is taut and powerful. Writer-Director Chinonye Chukwu (“Clemency”) keeps the story simple and direct, avoiding the kinds of clutter and side issues that sometimes creep into historical dramas. This movie rates a B.

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