Two white men were on trial in September 1955 for murdering Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black teen who allegedly offended a white woman at a grocery store in rural Mississippi.
Near the end of the movie “Till,” in theaters Friday, grieving 33-year-old single mom Mamie Till-Mobley (then Mamie Till Bradley), played by Atlanta native Danielle Deadwyler, took the stand to tell the jury of 12 white men that the mutilated, bloated body found in a river was indeed her son.
Chinonye Chukwu, the film’s director and writer, was originally going to go for a traditional multicamera scene, cutting between the attorneys and Mamie. But after watching the first take of Deadwyler’s riveting performance, she changed her mind.
