Gwen Carr sat up straight in her seat as she heard lines of dialogue delivered by the actor portraying Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy whose lynching in Mississippi in 1955 catalyzed the U.S. civil rights movement.
“As I watched that film, I became Mamie Till,” Carr said last month at a private advance screening of “ Till,” the Orion Pictures and United Artists biopic that debuted Friday as the first ever feature length retelling of the historic atrocity and Till-Mobley’s pursuit of justice for Emmett.
