Jesse Williams makes directorial debut exploring the aftermath of Emmett Till lynching in new movie

Sep 24, 2018

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Jesse Williams, the human rights activist and longtime star of Grey’s Anatomy, is set to make his directorial debut with Till, a film centered around the powerful story of Emmett Till’s mother of Mamie Till.

The film is based on Keith Beauchamp’s 2005 documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which led the Department of Justice to reopen Till’s case in 2004. Till focuses on Mamie’s journey for justice following her son’s 1955 murder in Mississippi.

“I’m honored to be directing the story of Mamie & Emmett: a tale of revolutionary defiance in the face of tremendous personal and public devastation,” Williams told Deadline in a statement. “An exploration of power and pulling back the curtain on cultural violence; of boyhood and maternity challenging America’s reflex to hide from itself; underdogs refusing to pretend that terror is freedom.”

Emmett was kidnapped after a white woman in Money, Mississippi lied and said he whistled at her. He was beaten, shot, had his body wrapped in barbed wire and was attached to a 75-pound fan.

His body was then thrown in the Tallahatchie River before being found days later. Mamie Till famously held an open casket funeral for Emmett, wanting to show the world what the racists had done to her son.

#TiLLtheMovie pic.twitter.com/7ozinBjJjz

— jesse Williams. (@iJesseWilliams) September 24, 2018

The photos were famously captured in the Chicago Defender and both Ebony and Jet Magazines. The death helped further spur the growing Civil Rights movement and made national headlines

The two white men who kidnapped and murdered Till were acquitted by an all-white jury in one of the country’s great miscarriages of justice. The men later brazenly confessed to the murder in an interview published in Look magazine, knowing that they were protected from being retried thanks to the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause.

Carolyn Bryant-Donham, the woman at the center of the kidnapping, admitted in 2017 to making up her testimony that Emmett Till had grabbed and threatened her.

Taraji P. Henson is also producing an upcoming project focused on Emmett Till in partnership with John Singleton, who will direct.