‘Hope & Fury’

NBC documentary looks at images that propelled civil rights

NEW YORK » Gruesome images of a lynched Emmett Till were seared into the minds of many black Americans in 1955 and helped lead to the modern civil rights movement. But few whites knew of their existence at the time.

That reality is at the top of NBC’s two-hour documentary — “Hope & Fury” — about how images propelled the civil rights effort. The film premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. ET as the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination approaches.

Till was the 14-year-old black Chicago boy visiting relatives in Mississippi, killed after a white grocery store clerk claimed he treated her rudely. Decades later, she recanted her story. That was far too late to save Till from being bludgeoned, shot in the head and thrown into a river. Two men were acquitted of the crime, even though they later admitted to it.

Given a casket nailed shut, Till’s mother ordered it open and Jet magazine took pictures of his horrible maimed head, beaten beyond recognition.

“For a mainstream, news audience, my guess is a large number of people knew his name, but didn’t really know what happened, which is the best and highest calling for a documentary like this,” said NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack. “Seeing these pictures underscores what happened, what really happened, why the murder of Emmett Till was such a shocking and important event in the civil rights movement.”

There’s no evidence that NBC ever showed the picture of Till’s body until a “Today” show story on the anniversary of his death in 1985, the network said. NBC wasn’t alone among the mainstream media.

“It was a different America,” Lack said.

As if to make amends, the documentary shows the image of a murdered Till seven times. NBC compared Mamie Till’s insistence that the brutal truth of what happened to her son be made visible to actions 2016 by the girlfriend of Philando Castile, who streamed the aftermath of his shooting by a

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS This undated photo shows Emmett Louis Till, a black 14-year-old Chicago boy, who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman in Mississippi.