JACKSON, Miss. — Two white men walked into a dark shack in rural Mississippi with flashlights, searching for a black teenager they claimed had flirted with one of their wives.
It was in the early morning hours of Aug. 28, 1955, when Emmett Till was kidnapped from his uncle's home in Money, Miss. The round-faced, handsome 14-year-old was visiting from Chicago.
Three days later, Till's body was spotted by a fisherman in the Tallahatchie River — eye detached, ear missing. His body was rendered unrecognizable, except for a ring on his hand.
Till's mother insisted upon a public viewing and funeral in Chicago for her son. Pictures of the body shocked the world.
Decades since the killing and acquittals of Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, the documentary "The Murder of Emmett Till" airs tonight as part of the "American Experience" series.
The 60-minute film on the murder that became a catalyst for the civil rights movement is being televised two weeks after the death of Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley. Mobley, 81, died Jan. 6 of heart failure in Chicago.
Stanley Nelson, the film's producer, remembers Till's murder.
"I was 4 years old when it happened," Nelson said. "It is something that I lived with, and I felt it was a very emotional story. For so many, it was a changing point in their lives. I think it was a story that is being forgotten."
Mobley had traveled the country over 40 years reminding people of her son's murder and trying to get a more thorough investigation of the case.
She participated in the documentary, but never got a chance to see it — which saddens Nelson.
"We wanted her to see it for the first time with an audience. She never did get a chance to see the film and she never did get a chance to see anyone brought to justice," he said.
Nelson, 51, said Mobley inspired him to make the documentary.
"I heard Mamie Till Mobley on the radio about three years ago and I was amazed at how clear she was and how articulate she was and what an incredible memory she had of the story," Nelson said.
"So that really was something that immediately pushed me to say that we have got to do this film," he said. "I realized that the people who were involved in the story were getting up there in age and if we were going to tell the story the way I thought it should be told, we need the eyewitnesses."
The documentary opens with a shot of the muddy back woods of the Tallahatchie River, then comes Mobley's account of seeing her son's body for the first time.
"I saw a hole, which I presumed was a bullet hole and I could look through that hole and see daylight on the other side," Mobley said. "And I wondered, was it necessary to shoot him?"
Till's cousin Wheeler Parker describes the night he saw the two men take the 14-year-old.
"It was like a nightmare. I mean someone come and stand over you with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight and you're 16 years old," Parker said. "It's a terrifying experience."
The documentary highlights Till's upbringing and his life in Chicago with his widowed mother, whose husband was killed years earlier in the military.
Mobley recounts saying goodbye to Emmett and watching his train pull away after drilling him on the South's racist rules.
Emmett and several of his cousins arrived in Mississippi Aug. 20. Almost a week later, Till was buying bubble gum at Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market in his uncle's hometown of Money.
Inside was storekeeper Carolyn Bryant, a pretty white brunette a French newspaper would later describe as "a crossroads Marilyn Monroe."
As Till left the store, several witnesses claimed he whistled loudly — a "wolf whistle."
Bryant stormed out of the store and people playing checkers on the porch warned she was getting a gun. The boys raced away. They made it home with the incident seemingly behind them.
Bryant's husband, Roy, had been trucking shrimp with Milam. When they learned of the incident, the two men began their search for Till.
Milam and Bryant were later arrested and charged with the murder, but an all-white jury acquitted the two men. Look magazine published an article with their alleged confession four months later. (Both have since died.)
The trial of Bryant and Milam brought hundreds of journalists to the courthouse on the square of Sumner, a town where a sign at that time proudly announced: "Sumner: A Good Place To Raise A Boy."
"You see what a circus it was with all the cameras there, all the footage that exists," Nelson said.
Sheriff H.C. Strider voiced what became a locally popular theory — that the whole thing was an NAACP conspiracy, that the mutilated body had been dug up and planted while Emmett was taken to Detroit to hide out.
Nelson said he hopes viewers will receive the main message of the documentary.
"I was trying to get people to understand that the civil rights movement was made up of everyday heroes. People like Mamie Till Mobley," Nelson said. "People complain about things in our country, and they complain about things in the world, but I think that this film shows how everyday people can rise up and change things."
