In 1964, forty-year-old novelist James Baldwin published his play Blues for Mister Charlie, which centered on the story of a young black man, Richard Henry, who was murdered by a southern redneck. The killer was subsequently acquitted. Baldwin noted in the preface that his work had been based “very distantly” on the Till case. Dedicated to Medgar Evers, the Evers family, and the children killed in the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, church bombings, Mister Charlie ran on Broadway from April through the end of August 1964. What Serling could not show to a television audience, Baldwin portrayed from the stage, yet not without criticism. “Mr. Baldwin knows how the Negroes think and feel,” wrote a reviewer in the New York Times following the premier at the ANTA Theater, “but his inflexible, Negro-hating Southerners are stereotypes. Southerners may talk and behave as he suggests, but in the theater they are caricatures.”8
Between Serling’s attempt to highlight the South’s dark side and Baldwin’s success in doing so, the southern race issue made its way to the movies when Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was adapted for the big screen in 1962. Stark similarities have been noted between the trial in Sumner and the courtroom drama in the case of Tom Robinson, a black man defended against rape charges by country lawyer Atticus Finch.9 Even if none were intended, audiences were less shocked to see the racial inequities of a Dixie trial portrayed on film because most had already lived through press coverage of J. W. Milam’s and Roy Bryant’s murder trial in the Mississippi Delta seven years earlier.
Over the next two decades, artists produced more about Emmett Till, but the overall offerings are scant. One must scour hard to find Julius E. Thompson’s 1977 poem, “Till,” published in the anthology Blues Said: Walk On. Four years later, “Afterimages,” by poet-activist Audre Lourde, appeared.10
Fast-forward once again to 1985. A week before the Samuels documentary aired in Chicago, the thirty-year anniversary of the Till case received national attention on NBC’s Today show. On July 3, Mamie Till-Mobley appeared on the program, alongside Bill Minor, the Mississippi reporter who had covered the 1955 trial for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Roy Bryant watched and taped the program, and was amused to hear host Bryant Gumbel ask, “Whatever happened to Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam?”11
Although the three-minute Today segment, which included a few clips from the Samuels film, was hardly substantive, it signified, together with The Murder and the Movement and the Clarion-Ledger and Jackson Daily News articles, that interest in the Till story was reemerging. A new generation would come to know about this pivotal moment in far greater numbers beginning January 21, 1987, when the first episode of a six-part series, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, premiered on PBS. Produced by Henry Hampton’s company, Blackside, the documentary was nineteen years in the making and cost $2.5 million, money secured from over forty-five different sponsors. Blackside’s team of twenty-five researchers interviewed over 1,000 people for the series, many in just a ten-day period at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.12 The opening segment, “Awakenings,” devoted fifteen minutes to the Emmett Till case and showed newsreel footage that most people had never seen. Those interviewed for the piece included Till’s cousin Curtis Jones (whose claimed eyewitness account of the Bryant store incident was, unfortunately, fabricated), former congressman Charles Diggs Jr., reporter James Hicks, novelist-journalist William Bradford Huie, and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Others, such as defense attorney J. W. Kellum and Bryant store witness Ruthie Mae Crawford Jackson, were also interviewed, but their stories were cut from the film entirely.13
By the time of its premiere, Eyes on the Prize was already being hailed as “a television classic, likely to endure as long as whites and blacks live together in America.” Just before the first episode aired, Hampton explained how he had long envisioned the series and the place of the Till case within the civil rights movement. “I knew what those [episodes] should be, [and] Emmett Till was the first thing I wanted to have.” Civil rights leader Julian Bond, who served as an adviser for the project, narrated all six episodes, off camera, although Hampton gave him a choice to appear on screen. Juan Williams, at that time a reporter for the Washington Post, took a sabbatical from the paper in 1985 to write a companion volume to the series, working closely with Hampton’s Boston production team.14
Both the book and the videocassette release of Eyes on the Prize became available a few months apart in 1987. The series, which attracted over five million viewers during its original television run, became popular in college classrooms. Its significance can also be measured by the fact that a Trenton, New Jersey, federal judge ordered a man convicted of burning a cross on the lawn of a black family to view the series with the aim that he develop some level of penitence. Eyes on the Prize went on to win four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcast journalism, the International Documentary Award, and the Television Critics Award. It was even nominated for an Academy Award after a brief theatrical release. An eight-part sequel, Eyes on the Prize: America at the Racial Crossroads, released in 1990, was similarly honored, winning two Emmys, a Peabody, and three Golden Eagle Awards. It, too, was narrated by Bond.15
With the foundation laid by the first Eyes on the Prize series, works that focused exclusively on Emmett Till followed. In 1988, Brandeis University professor Stephen Whitfield published the first full-length book on the case, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till. Whitfield, a southerner himself, first learned of Till’s death in Look magazine in January 1956 when he was just thirteen years old.16 In 1994, Clenora Hudson-Weems, an English professor at the University of Missouri–Columbia, published a revision of her 1988 PhD dissertation as Emmett Till: Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement, which argued that Till’s death was the catalyst for the organized struggle for equality that began just months after the murder.17
These works were groundbreaking in many respects. Yet what was missing was a quest for answers, because no one seemed to understand that there were still relevant questions. Studies of the Till case thus far had focused on the horrors of Jim Crow, the racial elements and brutality of the murder itself, and the fact that the accused and tried perpetrators were freed. In his 1963 thesis, Stephen Hugh Whitaker considered the testimony of Willie Reed, which claimed that others were involved, but Whitaker concluded that William Bradford Huie was correct in maintaining that Milam and Bryant had acted alone. Neither Samuels’s The Murder and the Movement nor Hampton’s Eyes on the Prize noted that others may have played a role in the killing, although the names of most of Milam’s and Bryant’s alleged accomplices had appeared in the press at the time of the trial and were known. Whitfield and Hudson-Weems addressed this issue only peripherally.18
Although Mamie Till-Mobley went on with life and kept her son’s memory alive in local circles through the Emmett Till Foundation and the Emmett Till Players, she never forgot the acquittal in Sumner. In fact, she had always wanted to reverse that injustice in some way. Even though Milam was dead, and Bryant could not be tried again on state charges, she remained optimistic that a probe of some kind was still a possibility. The spark that ignited her hope that justice might be forthcoming occurred in 1990 after prosecutors in Jackson, Mississippi, began a fresh probe into the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Two hung juries had kept Evers’s killer, Byron De La Beckwith, a free man for twenty-seven years, but because there had never been an acquittal, a third trial remained a possibility.19
On December 14, 1990, a Hinds County grand jury handed down a murder indictment against Beckwith, which energized Mamie with a new level of optimism about her son’s case. “Where there is a crack in the dam, the water has a chance to get out and other things have a chance to get in,” she said. “This has been bottled up for so many years.” With the state moving forward in its case against Beckwith, sixty-nine-year-old Mamie acknowledged that she had “been doing serious knocking” regarding a pursuit toward justice for Emmett.20 In February 1994, a jury finally convict
ed Beckwith of the murder of Medgar Evers and sentenced him to life in prison.21
Rumblings about a possible probe into the Till case began in May 1995 when attorney Johnnie Cochran, in Memphis, Tennessee, for the National Conference of Black Mayors, said in a private conversation that he wanted to launch an investigation himself; the case was personal for him because the injustice in the trial verdict had been his inspiration for going into law in the first place. The following August, as Cochran was nine months into the internationally followed murder trial of O. J. Simpson, in which Cochran helped defend the former football great, people close to the famous lawyer told the Tri-State Defender that Cochran planned to look into the Till case later that year or in early 1996. In December, two months after Simpson’s acquittal, Cochran confirmed in writing that he had “tentatively agreed to undertake an initial investigation into the circumstances surrounding Emmett Till’s death.”22
This development began the fulfillment of a dream that Mamie Till-Mobley had kept alive for decades. By then, Roy Bryant had also died, but Mamie was not overly concerned about punishing either the living or the dead. Her aim was that a new investigation would “force the state of Mississippi to acknowledge the state’s horrible collusion in allowing the men that murdered my only child to go free.” At the very least, she wanted the state to pay for the removal of Emmett’s body from Burr Oak to Oakwood Cemetery, where several African American notables were buried, including Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington. While visiting Emmett’s grave in August 1995, Mamie found that the headstone, purchased by singer Mahalia Jackson, was under water, and that both the photograph of Emmett and the flower vase were missing.23 After Mamie and Cochran discussed Cochran’s plans, Mamie told a reporter that success in this endeavor would “serve notice on a lot of people that those days of doing what you want to do to people are over.”24
For whatever reason, Cochran, who died of cancer ten years later, never pursued the matter further.25 Although this setback was obviously a disappointment for Mamie, it did not deter her from her goal. She knew, however, that she could not pursue it without help. “I often ask people to send letters to the Justice Department, because justice has not been done,” she said in 1996. After four decades, “I am yet trying to bring about justice in this case.”26
Eventually, others stepped in with the passion and drive needed to help Mamie in her quest. The first was Keith Beauchamp, a twenty-five-year-old Louisiana native who had just moved to New York City in 1996. Beauchamp was interested in a career in film and had big dreams about making a feature on the Till murder. He first learned about Emmett Till at age ten when he saw the Jet magazine photos of Till’s battered face. He never forgot them.27
By the time of his 1989 high school graduation, Beauchamp had come to view Emmett Till as a kindred spirit, due to an unfortunate racial incident that forever changed him. Beauchamp was dancing with a white girl at a party when a bouncer approached, pushed him, and said, “Nigger, mess with your own kind.” Beauchamp pushed back, and within moments, a fight broke out. The bouncer called over a man who, Beauchamp learned later, was an undercover police officer, and the fighting continued. Beauchamp was then taken to a back room where he was handcuffed to a chair. The police officer could not resist beating Beauchamp further, knocking over the chair, and nearly fracturing Beauchamp’s jaw in the process. During the entire ordeal, Beauchamp could think only of Emmett Till.
The case went to court, but after the officer twice failed to show, the judge dismissed it. Because of this incident, Beauchamp vowed he would devote himself to racial injustice. He enrolled at Southern University at Baton Rouge, majored in criminal justice, and set his sights on becoming a civil rights attorney.
During his junior year, he left his studies but not his passion, and moved to New York, where he joined two friends who had formed a company called Big Baby Films. He began writing and producing music videos and took a second job as a security guard. During a meeting with his Big Baby colleagues, Beauchamp was asked about his interest in writing a script for a full-length film. He decided immediately that he would do something on Emmett Till.28
Beauchamp worked diligently on his script. Once a draft was completed, he decided to seek the endorsement of Mamie Till-Mobley, even though he believed that was somewhat of a long shot. He contacted her by telephone in 1997, but he was so nervous after she answered that he immediately hung up. He called back, apologized, and explained to her his lifelong interest in her son’s tragic murder. They talked for two hours. Beauchamp was amazed by Mamie’s willingness to share her story so passionately with a young stranger.29
Beauchamp learned during this first conversation that after four decades, Mamie was still working toward some level of justice for her son, and he decided then and there to help her obtain it. After months of telephone conversations between the two, Beauchamp traveled to Chicago and met Mamie in person, an experience he described as “surreal.” When he arrived at her home, a relative, Ollie Gordon, ushered him into the kitchen, where Mamie was baking a pie. “I just hugged her,” he recalled fondly.30
Proceeding with Mamie became complicated at first, due to the constant presence and zealous oversight of her attorney, Lester Barclay, who wanted Beauchamp to sign a contract with his client. However, Mamie decided to bypass Barclay’s well-intentioned efforts to protect her, and she began working directly with the filmmaker.31
Although Beauchamp had initially reached out to Mamie regarding a feature film, his focus shifted after he began taking trips to Mississippi. There he learned of, met with, and interviewed people with stories of eyewitness accounts and other information related to the case, and he found himself listening to tales that had never before been told publicly. At first, he began incorporating their stories into his script, but Mamie soon encouraged him to use the footage he was accumulating and produce a documentary as a tool to inspire the government to launch a new investigation.32
One of the most dramatic moments for Beauchamp came when he interviewed Shirley Edwards, the first black mayor of Ruleville, Mississippi, home to Roy Bryant for the last twenty years of his life, and to Fannie Lou Hamer, the tireless civil rights activist who died in 1977. Before Bryant’s death in 1994, Edwards had long wanted the federal government to find a way to retry the acquitted killer.33 She apparently believed there were others who could still face prosecution. During Beauchamp’s interview with Edwards, which Beauchamp videotaped, an adviser to Edwards came into the room. “You don’t know what you are doing. You’re putting all of our lives in danger. There are people still alive who were involved in the murder.” The man was so concerned that he shut down the interview. “Mr. Beauchamp, you are treading in deep water. You have no idea what you are dealing with.” Rather than heed any advice to back off, Beauchamp resolved to continue his research. He had been taking his father along on his trips to the Delta, but out of concern for his safety, he began leaving him behind.34
The working relationship between Beauchamp and Till-Mobley soon grew into a close friendship, and she threw her support behind the young filmmaker. “I relate to Keith because when I first met him, I was struck by his youth,” she explained. “Then I began to feel his sincerity, his desire to do this job. And it was not a problem to get in step with him and help this project.”35
The possibilities for a dramatic film continued to develop, however, and in 1999 Beauchamp was approached by Lisa Rhoden, who optioned the script for her fiancé, Cuban director Leon Ichaso. The pair hoped to create a movie for the Showtime network, but executives there shelved that project in the end. Beauchamp, it turned out, was relieved. Losing control of his script felt “like they took my baby away.” Beauchamp then set out to do the film on his own, but those plans were soon curtailed due to financial limitations. With no feature film in the immediate future, he focused exclusively on his documentary.36
During this early phase of working with Beauchamp, Mamie also labored toward telling her story on the stage. On Se
ptember 9, 1999, the play The State of Mississippi vs. Emmett Till premiered at the O’Rourke Center at Truman College in Chicago and was performed by the Pegasus Players. It was based on Mamie’s own version of events, told to thirty-six-year-old playwright David Barr during a twenty-one-month period of collaboration. It ran through October 10. “I’ve been offered many contracts,” explained Mamie to the BET Weekend magazine, “but I wanted it told without any lies or enhancements. I have always said that if the story could not be done properly, it would never be done.”37 Although it opened to good reviews, unfortunately, it perpetuated Mamie’s belief that Emmett never actually whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a narrative Mamie had long hoped would replace the well-established stories of those who witnessed the event.38 Despite any shortcomings, this work paved the way for Mamie to eventually write her own memoir and was the first dramatic telling of her story of which she approved and had control.
As Keith Beauchamp persevered on his own project, he began to realize that the interviews he was conducting were sounding more like depositions. In 2000, he contacted Judge Bobby DeLaughter, former Hinds County prosecutor whose tenacity had not only led to the reopening of the Medgar Evers case but also won the 1994 conviction against Beckwith. Beauchamp wanted DeLaughter to appear in the film as trial judge Curtis Swango, but DeLaughter worried about ethics issues and politely declined. However, DeLaughter reviewed Beauchamp’s findings and encouraged him to forward the information on to Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore.39
Beauchamp also started speaking on various high school and college campuses, and, armed with a half-hour rough-cut of his film, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, he began campaigning for a new investigation and for the funds to finish his work. He was optimistic that his film might raise awareness in the same way a 1997 film by Spike Lee had regarding the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombings in Birmingham, Alabama. In Lee’s 4 Little Girls, the witnesses spoke for themselves; the conviction of seventy-one-year-old Bobby Frank Cherry followed five years later.40
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