The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (2005)

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (2005) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Strong documentary taking a look at the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was in Mississippi with relatives when he was kidnapped and brutally murdered after whistling at a white woman. The documentary runs 70-minutes and features interviews with Till's mother, many of his friends and cousins who witnessed the kidnapping as well as a journalist who was covering the trial. This is the second documentary I've seen on the Till killing and it always catches me off guard when I see his mother as well as people who witnessed the crime. This type of event was just so shocking and unbelievable that it's really hard to imagine that this took place not so long ago and it's especially recent when you see so many people from its story are still with us. It's always sad when certain bits of history are forgotten by so many and while I'm far from a history expert I do think that certain stuff (Pearl Harbor, 9/11) are such important events that they need to be remembered. This is such a case because it's not only a matter of Civil Rights but it's also the horrifying fact that a 14-year-old could be beaten and tortured so badly and no one ever paid for it. The recounting of the events are still chilling no matter how many times you hear them and especially the stuff with the mother talking about opening the coffin box and seeing how mutilated her son's face and body was. Graphic photos are shown of the body so people should be warned as the images are just ghastly and it's hard to believe that something like that could happen. THE UNTOLD STORY OF EMMETT LOUIS TILL is a very good documentary taking a look at one of the ugliest crimes in American history. It's certainly worth watching.

The Emmett Till story is really that of an American tragedy. A young man about 14 years old is sent from Chicago to spend summer in Money, Mississippi. He doesn't know how different the South is from Chicago. When he's there, he comes into contact with a white female cashier at the store where he places the money in her hand. Later, he is caught whistling at her. What happens next is horrific to describe. Emmett Till was an only child of a loving mother who had no idea about the tragedy that would occur in taking his life. Not only was Emmett's kidnapping and murder horrific, so is the terrorism that was happening in the South where lynchings, murders, and kidnapping of African American men were happening at an alarming rate. I hope the Emmett Till story and this documentary should be mandatory viewing in every classroom in America to show the hatred, violence, and horror of our history.

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.

We remember the generalized imagery of the pre-integration South, but as a person pretty well educated in such matters (or so I like to think) it was still horrifying to be confronted not only by the viciousness of the lynching and murder of Emmett Till but of the Mississippi attitudes that resulted in the acquittal of his killers. Truly, my jaw was open.Some details received short shrift. Perhaps that is because the film was about the emotional impact of the murder, and the political outcome from it. But if Beauchamp wanted to also cover the "whodunnit" details as he suggested, there were some interesting omissions. Gone was any discussion of the forensic evidence, and although a mention was made that a "confession" was published a year later, why did Beauchamp not tell us what it said? It would have also been interesting to know what the assailants (and the accuser, the woman in the store/wife of a killer) had to say, if anything, before they passed away.But setting aside what was "missing," what was there is really worth seeing, even if you think you know the story.