Emmett Till, 14, was murdered on Aug. 28, 1955 in Mississippi.

“Till” was released on October 1, 2022 to respectful reviews. Named one of the best films of 2022 by the National Board of Review, it has not resonated with the movie-going public. Made for a modest $20 million (not enough for marketing), it has grossed only $10 million. This well-crafted film, with its careful attention to the look of the 1950s and the “solid South,” to the Till family, especially the grief-stricken, intrepid mother of Emmett Till, places “Till” in the front rank of the 2022 releases and should win these awards:

Best Picture (Keith Beauchamp and five others, producers; United Artists)

Best Director (Chinonye Chukwu)

Best Screenplay (Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, Chinonye Chukwu)

Best Performance by an Actress (Danielle Deadwyler, an Oscar nominee)

Best Supporting Performance (Jaylyn Hall as Emmett)

The film centers on Mamie Till-Mobley, who fought for justice for her son. She refused to hide the hideous photos of the slain Emmett. She would not close his casket. “This is what racism looks like,” she declared. Result: Some 50,000 sobbing mourners filed past the casket. The case prompted the Civil Rights Movement, motivated Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus, and is a “name” to this day.

Here’s the story: On Aug. 21 Emmett traveled by train to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi. A week later he was dead at the hands of Roy Bryant and John Milam.

After a day in the cotton fields, where his relatives were sharecroppers, Emmett and family bought snacks at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market where Carolyn Bryant ran the cash register. Emmett paid for items and left. Bryant, also without incident, walked outside, where he jauntily whistled at her. Relatives, aware that they were now in grave danger, hustled Emmett away.

After midnight on Aug. 28, Roy, Carolyn’s husband, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, forced their way into the relatives’ home. They found Emmett in a bedroom and ordered him to dress before kidnapping him. His great-aunt offered the men money, but they refused as his uncle begged them not to take “a child.” They held the family at gunpoint. Once outside, Carolyn identified Emmett.

The men took Emmett to a secluded building, where they beat him, gouged out an eye, shot him in the head, shackled him with barbed wire to a 75-pound cotton gin fan, and threw him in the Tallahatchie River.

Back in Chicago, Mamie learned of his kidnapping, then met with the counsel to the NAACP. He warned that her personal history and past marriages would be used against her by the defense, which would try to shred her reputation. Mamie, by the way, was a well-spoken educator and always perfectly turned out, as was her son.

Three days later, a teenager fishing in the river found Emmett’s water-logged corpse. Mamie directed that the body in a coffin be returned to Chicago. She bravely identified his grossly mutilated body on an autopsy table. His funeral prompted headlines throughout the U.S. and Europe. Bryant and Milam were charged with murder. The NAACP, with considerable insensitivity, urged Mamie to help galvanize federal support for voting rights while her fame was current.

With her father, Mamie traveled to Mount Bayou, Mississippi, for the trial. In an awful moment, they were spread-eagled against the courtroom wall and frisked for weapons. On the plus side for the NAACP, the excellent Medgar Evers, the first field secretary in Mississippi for the organization, was instrumental in getting a trial and persuading the NAACP to publicize the case. Evers was assigned to drive Mamie and her father to and from the courthouse.

Eight years later Evers was shot dead in front of his wife and children after garnering a reputation for decency, statesmanship and justice. He fought Jim Crow laws, segregation in education, and much more. Many of us remember the death of Medgar Evers in 1963 at the hands of Byron de la Beckwith, just as we recall the Plague Year, 1968, when we lost Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

In court Emmett’s Uncle Moses Wright described the boy’s kidnapping, how the family tried to prevent it, and how Milam held the family at gunpoint. Willie Reed was an eyewitness to Emmett’s killing, but was never tried as an accessory. In a riveting scene, Mamie stood up in court and identified the corpse as her son literally limb by limb. Later, Carolyn Bryant testified with a fake story of Emmett’s sexual advances. To the surprise of no one, the jury bought it. After deliberating for one hour they exonerated Bryant and Milam.

In the film’s heartbreaking closing scene, Mamie envisions her son in his jaunty hat, back home and beaming lovingly at her.

After they were acquitted, Bryant and Milam confessed to kidnapping and murder in a Look magazine article because they couldn't be retried. In 1955 there were no federal hate crime statutes, as there are now. Thus, the Till case went into the Cold Case files at the Department of Justice. The case was reopened in 2004 and 2017 to no avail. You can visit https://www.justice.gov/crt/case/emmett-till-0 to learn more about why the case was closed.

Mamie Till-Mobley, a school teacher, died at 81 in 2003. Emmett is buried in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, a part of the Chicago metropolitan area. Two predominantly African American cemeteries are in Alsip. Notable Chicagoans are buried there including Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Dinah Washington, Jimmie Crutchfield—and Emnmett.

The Till story exists in a biography of Mamie, a book about the case, encyclopedia entries, a documentary and, now, a fine movie.

The production team had tried for years to make the picture. In the process they did not caricature whites in the town of Money, but once Emmett arrives there the tension is palpable mainly because we know how the story ends. Beauchamp and Chukwu objectively lay out the facts of the case and allow Deadwyler to carry the picture. She does and a star is born.

If you haven’t already, you owe it to yourself to see this honest film that is true to a horrendous part of America’s historical record.