Directed by Keith Beauchamp
One of the most ghoulish images in The Untold Story of Emmett Till has nothing to do with the slain 14-year-old's broken, brutalized body. Shortly after the sham trial of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant has concluded—the verdict, not guilty—reporters interview the two men with their wives. After declaring how fine they feel, the Milams giggle, while Carolyn and Roy Bryant engage in a deep, victorious, tongue-filled soul kiss.
In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till left his mother in Chicago for a summer visit with relatives in Mississippi. He didn't come back. There's "no way of conceiving what the South was like," one relative remembers. He fears, rightfully, that Emmett may not have been adequately prepped. Because not only did Emmett place money directly into Carolyn Bryant's hand at a town store in Money, Mississippi, but he allegedly whistled at her a little while later.
Soon after, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant snatched him out of bed from his great-uncle Mose Wright's home in the middle of the night. When his naked body, lashed to a cotton gin, was pulled from a nearby body of water a few days later, it was damaged beyond recognition. Wright identified him by his father's ring, still on his finger. His tongue had been cut, his genitals and ears cut off, and an axe had nearly cleaved his face from his head. And he'd been shot: His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, said she could see daylight through the hole in her son's head.
As the local sheriffs ordered Emmett's mutilated body sealed and buried, Mamie nearly didn't get to see her son. Local sheriffs wanted Emmett—evidence of something much larger and uglier than one abhorrent crime—out of sight. Mamie fought that battle and won. Furthermore, she insisted on an open casket. As funeral-goers file past it, some recoil, or fall back violently as if they've been kicked or shot. Al Sharpton notes that it would have been understandable for Mamie to close up the box and grieve quietly. Instead, she forced America to look at "its ugly race problem," thus helping launch the Civil Rights movement.
While archival footage is essential to any documentary, there's one way, in The Untold Story, in which it's almost misleading: The b&w images make this world, this South, seem very long ago and far away. But Emmett's cousins and friends who tell their stories on camera are scarcely past the outer bounds of middle age. Their relative youth signifies how disturbingly recent Emmett's murder is.
This film catalyzed the FBI's reopening of Emmett Till's case. Thanks to the vigilance of Keith Beauchamp and the late Till-Mobley, this chapter of history is still being written.
Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. (betw. 6th Ave. & Varick St.), 212-727-8110, call for times.
—Kate Crane
