‘She was the mother of the civil rights movement’

‘An unintentional When a 14-year-old boy was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, his activist’ EVERETT COLLECTION INC/ALAMY

mother’s actions helped to spark the civil rights movement. A new film,Till,tells the story of Emmett’s murder and of Mamie, who in her response to the tragedy, says producer KEITH BEAUCHAMP, drew on her faith

Interview by Philip Halcrow

Emmett Till with his mother, Mamie

ANXIOUS about her young son

Emmett’s trip from their home in Chicago to visit family members in the Deep South, Mamie Till (Danielle Deadwyler) advises him: ‘Be small.’ Mississippi will be a different world that has different expectations of how black people should behave. Emmett (Jalyn Hall) thinks his mother is worrying unnecessarily.

The history that subsequently unfolds in the new film Till – released at cinemas yesterday (Friday 6 January) – is that in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was abducted, beaten and lynched, his body dumped in a river.

In a director’s statement, Chinonye Chukwu explains that, when she was approached to tell a story about Emmett Till, she found herself ‘drawn to a singular figure at the centre of his orbit’.

She says: ‘I saw an opportunity to subvert expectations and approach the narrative through another lens – from the maternal point of view of Mamie TillMobley. Had it not been for Mamie, her son’s memory would have evaporated into thin air.’

Till shows how Mamie’s anxiety had been well founded and how it was followed by grief and then by resolve.

After Emmett is hunted down and killed purportedly for whistling at a white shopworker, Carolyn Bryant, Mamie insists that his maimed body – initially identified because he was wearing a ring bearing his late father’s initials – be returned to her in Chicago. She decides to hold an open casket funeral at the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. She allows a magazine to publish photographs of her son’s body, wanting the world to witness the result of oppression and hatred.

Refusing to disappear into the background – and giving her own mother, Alma (Whoopi Goldberg), cause to be anxious – she travels to Mississippi under the protection of civil rights and social justice campaign group the NAACP. She attends and takes part in the trial of the two white men, Roy Bryant and JW Millam, accused of the murder.

In a climate where the local sheriff dismissively says that the disfigured body from the river could not be identified, that Emmett ‘is still alive somewhere’ and that the NAACP may have plotted the whole

thing, the verdict seems inevitable. Mamie does not stay in the courtroom to hear it. But she does not walk away from the fight against racial injustice. The film shows her working as an activist for equality. Mamie’s response to her son’s murder had a big effect, says Keith Beauchamp, co-producer and co-writer of Till. ‘Her impact was Mamie was the paramount,’ he tells me via a Zoom call. ‘I believe mother of the Mamie Till-Mobley was the unsung hero of the civil rights civil rights movement. I’ve always considered her as movement being the mother of it. It’s because of the murder of Emmett Till that we learn about the likes of Dr Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. ‘Rosa Parks said that Emmett Till was foremost in her mind when she made the courageous decision not to get up from her seat on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr Martin Luther King – who was 26 years old at the time of the Emmett Till lynching – did not arise as a leader until he took on the Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the reason for him taking on the boycott wasn’t just because of the actions

Jalyn Hall as Emmett and Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie in the new film ‘Till’

of Rosa Parks. Dr King too was inspired by the murder of Emmett Till. The year of Emmett’s murder – 1955 – was an election year, and Dr King felt that it was an intimidation factor to keep black people away from voting.

‘When you put Emmett’s story in its rightful context in American history, you see that, without him, a movement for

‘Till’ writer and producer Keith Beauchamp

change may have happened, but I don’t believe it would have been as powerful. He became the poster child to the anti-lynching movement, which came out of the Black resistance movement and would later become the

American civil rights movement.’

Keith’s participation in the film has a personal, as well as a professional, angle. Long affected by Emmett’s story, he had contacted Mamie in 1995, met her the following year and went on to make a documentary about the murder. The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till featured interviews with Mamie, with the family that Emmett had been visiting in Mississippi and with witnesses.

‘She eventually became not only my close friend and confidante but my mentor for eight and a half years until her passing,’ he says.

‘The documentary was a result of my failed attempt in trying to get the story of Emmett Till on the big screen. Mother Mobley herself had been trying to produce a movie about Emmett. Right after the lynching took place, she had two movie deals but they were never produced, because of the times.

‘As I was down South uncovering new evidence, she encouraged me to pursue the documentary so that it could be used as a stepping stone to get the case reopened.

‘So Till is a lifelong dream of Mother Mobley’s, but also a promise I gave her before she passed away that I would do all that I could not only to fight for justice

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for Emmett but also to make sure that this story is seen on the big screen.’

In his contributions to Till, Keith says, he wanted to make sure that the film was able ‘to resurrect’ the woman that he knew.

‘When she spoke, you could feel the words – that’s how much of an impact she had on not just me but anybody whose paths crossed hers.

‘But I wanted to do more than just resurrect a dear friend – I wanted people to meet the person that I had met, in the hope that it would transfer to them the energy that I felt from her. I believe that when someone is so inspirational and you’re able to tell their story, it can become contagious. And in playing her, Danielle Deadwyler captures her through and through.’

Towards the end of the film Deadwyler portrays Mamie standing on a platform, addressing a crowd and urging them to work for freedom for all. At the beginning of her speech, she thanks God as ‘the source of my strength’. The words are significant, says Keith.

‘It’s only through faith that this woman – who was only 33 years old at the time – would have been able to deal with the tragedy in her life. And I say that because I don’t think people really understand what happened. ‘I knew the more polished woman Mamie Till-Mobley, the elder, the much wiser woman. I never knew the 33-year-old Mamie Till-Bradley. And when you think about the story of Till from Emmett’s abduction, his death and the trial of 1955 – all this is happening within a one-month span. Here’s a woman who becomes an unintentional activist in the midst of all these “isms” of the world that she has to constantly fight in order to get

her mind set in a manner to seek justice for her son. It’s only through faith, I believe, that that could have happened. ‘Mamie Till-Mobley and her family were God-fearing people. Her mother, Alma Spearman, was known to have founded Cogic – Church of God in Christ – churches throughout the United States and particularly throughout the South She understood that going up to Chicago. So faith, religion and God the Creator had always been a Emmett was here very significant part of Mother Mobley’s life.’ for a higher purpose Mamie’s faith was not unshaken by her son’s death. ‘There’s a scene in the film where she’s questioning God and asking why he has taken her child from her,’ says Keith. ‘But she quickly understood that Emmett was here for a higher purpose, and she was able to gather herself to deal with the case in 1955 and beyond. ‘In fact, she talked about how God came to her in a vision when Emmett was lynched. He told her that Emmett wasn’t

Emmett (Jalyn Hall) outside the store where he causes offence to a white woman

Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler) and her mother Alma (Whoopi Goldberg) in ‘Till’

Mamie and family members at the trial of the two men accused of Emmett’s murder in September 1955

hers, that he belonged to him and that Emmett was brought into this world for a higher purpose. She truly believed that.

‘She talked about this vision all the time to me, until I believed that something must have reached her to enable her to deal with such injustice.’

Empowered by her strong faith, Mamie became an activist who advocated for social justice and equal educational opportunities for black children and who continued to speak about – and seek justice for – what had happened to her son.

The end of Till provides only a partial resolution. Before the closing credits roll, the film mentions the 1957 Civil Rights Act and notes that the US signed the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act into law as recently as this year. However, no one was convicted of Emmett’s murder, even though the two men accused admitted to it in a magazine interview the year after the trial. And, says Keith, there is still a need for change in society. Yet he believes that the hope for such change can be drawn from the story retold in Till. ‘The hope comes when you see what transpired in 1955,’ he says. ‘The murder of Emmett Till and the courageous actions of his mother led to the civil rights movement, which was one of the greatest movements that was ever created by citizens anywhere. And we have all benefited from this movement, not just in the United States but across this globe.’