Nigerian-born Chinonye Chukwu has moved to the front rank of directors with her hit movie Till, the true story of a 14-year-old black youngster who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman.
Till is not just about the sickening murder of the boy, Emmett Till, which is one of the best known and most infamous sagas of the civil rights era in the US. It is about the struggle for justice by his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.
Mamie is played by Danielle Deadwyler, who is already a frontrunner for an Oscar. Mamie’s mother, Alma, is played by actor, comedian and television personality Whoopi Goldberg.
Chukwu, who wrote and directed the movie, says black women are often overlooked or erased from history. But Mamie’s decision to hold an open-casket funeral for her son, and to publish photos of his mutilated face, served as a catalyst for political action against racism.
“Without Mamie Till-Mobley, the world wouldn’t know who Emmett Till was,” Chukwu says. “She wanted the world to witness what happened to her child so that it can stop happening to other black children and [adults].”
Chukwu was born in Port Harcourt and moved to Oklahoma and then Alaska in the US when she was six, while continuing to visit Nigeria often.
It is a harrowing tale. Chukwu told National Public Radio in the US that when they were shooting the scene where Emmett is abducted, the actor Jalyn Hall, who was 14 at the time, asked if he could pause so he could get a hug from his mom.
Emmett Till was murdered three days after he arrived in Money, Mississippi. On 24 August 1955, he allegedly whistled at a pretty 21-year-old white girl, Carolyn Bryant, who worked at a store frequented by blacks. He ended up being lynched.
Till’s murderers confessed to Look Magazine for $4,000 after being acquitted, and Carolyn Bryant – who claimed at the trial that Emmett had tried to rape her – is still alive and unpunished to this day. A US anti-lynching law was only passed in 2022.
Pictured above: Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till-Mobley
Image source: @NBCNews
