Emmett Till was 14 years old in the summer of 1955 when he traveled by train from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit relatives. What happened next shocked a nation and would prove to be a focal point for the Civil Rights Movement. His tragic story is being retold by the powerful new television drama, Women of the Movement, created and written by Marissa Jo Cerar. The program includes highlights of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and her fight for justice following Emmett’s brutal lynching. Christina Shutt, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, will moderate a conversation on Emmett’s life and legacy. Joining in the conversation will be Cerar, along with Pamela Junior, executive director for the Two Mississippi Museums and Steven D. Booth, archivist and project manager of the Johnson Publishing Company Archive which is co-stewarded by the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The event will be livestreamed on the library’s Facebook page.
The Life and Legacy of Emmett Till
Thursday, Feb. 17, 7 p.m.
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
Via Facebook
This article appears in Thousand-Year Statehouse.
