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ABC Premiers First Series on Jay-Z and Will Smith’s Emmett Till’s Story

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ABC to boost Blacks and the Civil Rights movement as it sets to air the first season of ‘Women of the Movement.  The first series focuses on the civil rights movement from an anthological perspective. Available reports from the Vulture; the series deals with the women behind the story, their experiences, and compilations. Emmet Till’s story has been championed by Jay-Z, Will Smith, and Aaron Kaplan. It shall focus on Emmett Till’s mother; Mamie Till Mobley’s and the civil rights movement.

 

Mamie Till Mobley took on the reigns of advocacy and the civil rights movement after the gruesome murder of her son, Emmett Till. Till was a 14-year-old teenager from Chicago, Illinois on a visit to relatives. He was lynched in Money, Mississippi in 1955 by a white mob. He was accused of sexual advances, by whistling at Carolyn Donham, a 21-year-old white cashier at a grocery store. Till was later abducted from his home and brutalized. He was then shot in the head before his body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River. Mamie Till Mobley asked for the casket be left open at her son’s funeral so photos of the gruesome murder would be seen by the world. And so the murder of the teenage boy at Mississippi went viral; nationwide.

Emmet Till on ABCThe story of Emmett Till’s murder became a focal point for Civil Rights Movements and issues of black murders. The story would be Executive produced by Shawn Carter – Jay-Z and Will Smith to re-hash Mamie Till Mobley’s account of her travails. Other stories reflecting the experiences of the Black community and the Civil Rights Movement will make up the first season of ‘Women of the Movement’. Though Mamie died in 2003, her struggles for Civil Rights still lives on.

Black civil rights movementAbout 5 years ago the series was pitched by Overbrook, Roc Nation, and Kapital to run on HBO but suffered a setback. Due to share determination, Jay-Z and Will Smith stood strong till it set to become a reality. The ‘Women of the Movement’ is an anthology focusing on the struggles of women in the ‘50s’ and ‘60s’ against inequality and injustice.

 

The initial eight episodes will focus on a book written by Devery S. Anderson, “Emmett Till: The Murder that Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement”. The book primarily tells of Mamie Till-Mobley’s antecedents in a bid to get justice for her son.

 

Carolyn Donham (formerly Carlyn Bryant as at the time of the incidence) owned up, stating her claims about Till were untrue. Her statement was published in ‘The Blood of Emmett Till”. The murderers were able to evade justice as they were arraigned before an all-white jury. Donham’s husband, Roy Bryant, and half-brother, Milam J.W; were acquitted alongside the white mob for the murder of Till. They, however, admitted to the crime one year after while answering questions from a reporter. But Roy and Milam got no trial on the grounds or law of double jeopardy.

The case into the murder of Till was re-opened in 2018 following ‘new information’ as stated by the US Department of Justice. The news was reported by the Associated Press following Barack Obama’s grant to re-visit inconclusive civil rights cases before 1970. The case comes under Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Re-authorization Act of 2016.

 

Till’s story, however, marked an important point in the struggle for equality and the civil rights movement.

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