Women of the Movement, the upcoming six-episode anthology series based on Emmett Till’s murder and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley premieres Thursday, January 6th on ABC.
ABC recently shared a teaser trailer and behind-the-scenes look for the show.
After the death of her son, Mamie Till-Mobley became an activist as she demanded justice for her son, helping ignite the civil rights movement.
Executive produced by JAY-Z’s Roc Nation and Will Smith’s Westbrook Media, the upcoming anthology series will follow the accounts of Till’s life and death based on the book Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement by Devery S. Anderson. A posthumous icon of the civil rights movement, Till was a 14-year-old boy lynched to death by a white mob in 1955 Mississippi after being falsely accused of “offending” a white woman, according to the rules of the Jim Crow-era South. His murder and the acquittal of his murderers (who openly confessed to their crime in an interview a year later) sparked outrage in the Black community. Till-Mobley famously had an open-casket funeral for her son, allowing newspapers to print photos that showed exactly how gruesome the nature of Till’s attack was. She devoted her life to the civil rights movement, becoming a teacher and an activist, working to educate people about what happened to her son until she died of heart failure at the age of 81 in 2003.
Till will be played by 16-year-old Cedric Joe, and Mamie Till-Mobley will be played by Tony Award-winning actress Adrienne Warren.
Premieres Thursday, January 6th on ABC.
