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DU Home > News & Events > Media Releases > October 2005

MEDIA RELEASES

Contact
Jessica Mackinnon
jmack@dom.edu
(708) 524-6289

DU Hosts Director of Film on Emmett Till Murder

Dominican University will present director Keith Beauchamp in a discussion and screening of his film The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till on Thursday, November 17 at 6:00 p.m. in the auditorium of the Priory Campus, 7200 W. Division Street.

Beauchamp’s documentary records his nine-year investigation of the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who, while visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped and murdered after allegedly whistling at a white woman. The film, a mix of archival footage and interviews with surviving witnesses, has been credited with influencing the U.S Department of Justice to reopen the case late last year.

The case stunned the country 50 years ago not only because of the brutality of the murder and the haste with which an all-white jury acquitted the two white men accused of the crime but, most importantly, because of Till’s indomitable mother’s decision to publicly display his battered body. Thousands of people filed past the open casket during Till’s Chicago funeral and photographs of the body in Jet magazine and The Chicago Defender galvanized the civil rights movement.

Beauchamp will describe how his decades-long investigation led him to believe that many more people were involved in Till’s murder than the two men acquitted of the crime, both of whom boasted of their complicity after their acquittal. He interviewed relatives of Till’s who either saw or heard several cars pulling up to Till’s great-uncle’s home the night of the kidnapping. He also read stories in the African-American press that named additional suspects, not all of whom were white.

For more information about the screening of The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, please contact Janice Monti, professor of sociology and criminology, at (708) 524-6771.

Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In the 2006 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report again ranked Dominican University in the top tier of Midwest master’s level universities and as a “best value” for the eighth consecutive year.