The Murder of Emmett Till

A reminder of the awful days of racism, mob violence and lynching in the Deep South. Emmett Till was a carefree 14-year-old from Chicago who in the summer of 1955 went to pick cotton and visit relatives in the Mississippi Delta. He had the misfortune to wolf whistle at a white woman in a grocery story. Three nights later, he was kidnapped, beaten and shot through the head. His mother allowed his body to be displayed in an open casket in Chicago. Thousands saw it. Though the men now acknowledged to be the killers were freed by an all-white jury, Till's death became an international story. This resolutely unflashy documentary gives a moving and well crafted account of the circumstances leading to the slaying and how Emmett became, in his mother's words, 'the sacrificial lamb of the Civil Rights movement'. In 2004, thanks in part to this documentary, the US Justice Department reopened the case.