Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

The murder of Emmett Till [videorecording] / a Firelight Media Production for American Experience ; a production of WGBH, Boston ; producer, Stanley Nelson ; writer, Marcia Smith ; director, Stanley Nelson.

Contributor(s): Material type: FilmFilmPublisher number: AMER 6505 | PBS Home VideoPublication details: Boston : WGBH Educational Foundation ; Alexandria, Va. : PBS Home Video, c2003.Edition: Full screen versionDescription: 1 videodisc (ca. 60 min.) : sd., col. with b&w sequencesISBN:
  • 079369552X
  • 9780793695522
Uniform titles:
  • American experience (Television program)
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Production credits:
  • Cinematographer, Robert Shepard ; edited by Lewis Erskine ; narrator, Andre Braugher ; composer, Tom Phillips.
  • Cinematographer, Robert Shepard ; editor, Lewis Erskine ; composer, Tom Phillips ; coordinating producer, Laurens Grant ; assistance producer, Amilca Palmer ; sound supervisor, Rena C. Kosersky.
Narrator, Andre Braugher.Summary: The shameful, sadistic murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a black boy who whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi grocery store in 1955, was a powerful catalyst for the civil rights movement. Although Till's killers were apprehended, they were quickly acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury and proceeded to sell their story to a journalist, providing grisly details of the murder. Three months after Till's body was recovered, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.
Audiovisual profile: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult DVD Adult DVD Dr. James Carlson Library DVD 364.1523 M974 Available 33111004506230
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In August 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth from Chicago, was visiting relatives near the town of Money, MS. Leaving a small grocery store, Emmett allegedly whistled at the white woman behind the counter. Though he didn't know it at the time, the teenager had broken a cardinal rule in the Jim Crow South -- and within a few days, his battered and mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River. After an all-too-speedy trial, the white men accused of murdering Till were acquitted, but a few years later unashamedly "confessed" to their crime in a national magazine. Emmett's mother Mamie Till Mobley had known all along that a black person could not expect fair treatment in the lily-white South, but she was not about to bury the incident along with her son's body. Grimly and defiantly, Mamie insisted that Emmett's body not be cosmetically altered by the undertaker, but that the boy's ravaged and befouled corpse be displayed in an open coffin for all to see. Photographs of this grisly site were widely distributed by the leading black-oriented publications of the period, eliciting nationwide outrage from blacks and whites alike. As an end result of Emmett's horrible death, the comparatively dormant Civil Rights movement of the late '40s and early '50s was suddenly jump-started back to life. The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the 60-minute documentary The Murder of Emmett Till made its public-TV debut as part of the American Experience anthology in January 2003 -- a scant few weeks after the death of Mamie Till Mobley. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Originally broadcast as part of the television series The American experience.

Cinematographer, Robert Shepard ; edited by Lewis Erskine ; narrator, Andre Braugher ; composer, Tom Phillips.

Cinematographer, Robert Shepard ; editor, Lewis Erskine ; composer, Tom Phillips ; coordinating producer, Laurens Grant ; assistance producer, Amilca Palmer ; sound supervisor, Rena C. Kosersky.

Narrator, Andre Braugher.

The shameful, sadistic murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a black boy who whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi grocery store in 1955, was a powerful catalyst for the civil rights movement. Although Till's killers were apprehended, they were quickly acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury and proceeded to sell their story to a journalist, providing grisly details of the murder. Three months after Till's body was recovered, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.

MPAA rating: Not rated.

DVD; NTSC 1; English Dolby surround stereo.

Closed-captioned.

Powered by Koha