Parents' Guide to The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till

THE UNTOLD STORY OF EMMETT LOUIS TILL begins in 1955, when Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy, left Chicago to visit his relatives in Money, Mississippi. One fateful afternoon, he whistled at a white store clerk, a woman named Carolyn Bryant. Shortly after, he was taken out of his bed in the night by two white men: Bryant's husband, Roy, and his friend, J.W. Milam. Till's body was later discovered in the Tallahatchee River, bound in barbed wire to a 70-pound cotton gin fan. Till was brutally murdered: his eyes gouged, teeth knocked out, tongue cut off, and even worse. While the sheriff in charge of the investigation in Mississippi was eager to have Till buried as soon as possible, Till's mother, Mamie, with the help of Chicago politicians, was able to get her son's body back to Chicago, where, despite her crushing grief and sorrow, she had an open-casket funeral for her son so the world could witness the brutality of her son's murder and how the social order of Jim Crow racism was the reason. While Till's two murderers were never found guilty in Mississippi by any all-white jury, the outrage and protest that emerged from Till's killing inspired many in Mississippi and throughout America to stand up and begin what would be the civil rights movement. This documentary lays bare the shocking facts of this incident, placing it in the context of the Jim Crow South while highlighting the courage of the individuals who stood up to try to put an end to such injustice.