Product Description

Studio: Pbs Release Date: 05/04/2009 Run time: 60 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34883 in DVD
• Brand: PBS
• Released on: 2004-02-03
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 53 minutes

From the Back Cover
In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, who was from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and trial horrified the nation and the world. Till's death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

Customer Reviews

Disturbing..
I wasn't born when Emmett Till was murdered, yet this story has always troubled me. Watching this PBS documentary just mesmerized me. I don't understand this kind of hate, that grown men would drag a young boy from his bed and literally beat him to death. And how a legal system or the community could support the white men because they were white and the victim was black. One witness said he heard "beating" and the boy "screaming." I get goose bumps when I think of that... This movie is not for the squeamish, because it deals with the facts without sugarcoating them. I could watch it because I know it really happened. Turning away and burying my head in the sand because its too horrible to accept is why slavery and the brutal treatment of blacks in the long history of this country lasted so long. God-fearing people have got to face history, learn from it, and vow never to allow the bad parts of it to be repeated... Watching this movie with an open heart and mind will convict you to that end.

Powerful film!
This films shows the events around the lynching of Emmett Till, a Black teenager from Chicago. Emmett was visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955 when he was tortured and murdered by racists.
This film talks about real history, not the sanitized versions we get in high school and on t.v.

The Murder of Emmett Till: An Education Worth Viewing
The Murder... provides a thoughtful and soul stirring view of how racial hate destroys individuals and social institutions. At the same time, it is a reminder of the historical nightmares pregnant in America as a result of segregation. Indeed, this film renewed my commitment to be an individual who teaches students about the way African Americans have thrived in the midst of living within and in the blues existence known as racial hate. This is a movie all people need to experience.