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March 08, 2006

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till

In August 1955 a fourteen-year old named Emmett Till went to Money, Mississippi to visit family. While in town one day, Emmett whistled at a woman named Carolyn Bryant. That night the woman's husband and a friend kidnapped Till and beat him savagely before throwing him into the Tallahatchee River with a weight fastened to his neck with barbed wire. Till's murderers were taken into custody, but despite clear evidence the men were guilty the jury acquitted them both. It will come as no surprise to readers that Till was black, and that his murderers and the jury that acquitted them were white. Till's murder was a brutal crime that helped to spark the civil rights movement in America.

The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till tells this story in impressive detail, laying out the facts about the murder and its aftermath up to the present day. It is not an easy story to hear or see, but it is one I think worth viewing. Not because I believe that America's racial past is a hairshirt we should clothe ourselves in. I do not believe we should either be too proud of the good things America has done in the past, nor too ashamed of the bad things America has done in the past, because those things, while part of our shared heritage, are not things we ourselves did. But the history of black America is one of the central narratives of American history. The most intense debates over the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were over how they addressed black slavery, and the most bloody war in American history remains the Civil War we fought over slavery. Emmett Till's murder was a seminal moment in that history, and as such I believe it is only proper that we educate ourselves about it. Keith Beauchamp's documentary is an excellent start to such an education.

The documentary is not easy to watch. Beauchamp does not flinch from showing just what his killers did to Till's body, images that will remain with me for a very long time, if not forever. The story also lacks any semblance of a happy ending. Beyond the natural horror we feel for what was done to Till the viewer must also face the utter lack of justice delivered in his case even today, 51 years later. Beauchamp deserves credit for letting the story tell itself. While there is no lack of outrage expressed by many of those interviewed about what happened, the documentary is remarkably dispassionate, asking the viewer to draw his own conclusions. This decision made it more powerful and more effective. The viewer will likely finish the film feeling angry and disgusted at what it presents, but those emotions are a natural reaction to the facts rather than the manipulated result of careful presentation.

There is much more to the story of Emmett Till than one documentary can present, particularly as it relates to the larger question of the American civil rights movement, but 'The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till' is a very good starting point for anyone seeking to learn more about that important piece of American history.