'Women of the Movement' on ABC: The Heroic True Story of Emmett Till's Mother Mamie

Adrienne Warren portrays American civil rights activist Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till (played by Cedric Joe) in Women of the Movement on ABC. The six-part series, which will air every Thursday for the next three weeks at 8 p.m. ET, follows the true story of Mamie Till, who devoted her entire life to getting justice for her son after his murder at the hands of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam in 1955.

At the time of his death, Emmett Till was just 14 years old.

Mamie Till's fight for justice and the tragic story of her son was one of the key moments in the U.S. civil rights movement and over 60 years later continues to play a role in today's Black Lives Matter movement. Newsweek has everything you need to know about Women of the Movement on ABC and the heroic true story of Emmett Till's mother Mamie.

The Heroic True Story of Emmett Till's Mother Mamie

Emmett Till's mother Mamie Till was born in Mississippi in 1921 and later moved to Chicago with her parents during the "Great Migration," which saw over six million African Americans leave the rural South for the urban areas of the North. When she was 18 years old, she met Louis Till, an amateur boxer from New Madrid, Missouri. They married on October 14, 1940, and their son Emmett Till was born on July 25, 1941.

Mamie Till details in her memoir Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America that, shortly after Emmett's Till's birth, Mamie and Louis Till separated after Mamie learned he had been unfaithful. She eventually obtained a restraining order against him and he was sent to the U.S. Army, leaving her to raise their son as a single mother.

Mamie and Emmett Till re-located to Chicago's South Side in the early 1950s, where Mamie Till married her second husband, Pink Bradley. They divorced two years later.

In 1955, Emmett spent the summer with his cousins in Money, Mississippi. On August 28, 1955, he was abducted, tortured, and lynched after "interacting inappropriately" with 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham, a white woman.

Bryant Donham's husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam stood trial for Emmett Till's murder in September 1955, but were acquitted by an all-white jury.

At her son's funeral, Mamie Till insisted his coffin be left open. This meant mourners were able to see the extent of Emmett Till's brutal injuries. Photographs of Emmett's Till's body were also published across the globe and became a turning point in the growing civil rights movement.

In 1956, Bryant and Milam confessed to killing Emmett Till in conversation with Look magazine, under the protection of double jeopardy, meaning they could not be tried on the same charges.

The U.S. Justice Department announced in December 2021 it was closing its investigation into Emmett Till's murder. As a result, nobody was ever convicted for Emmett Till's death.

The lack of justice in her son's case spurred Mamie Till to fight for her son's name and punish those responsible for the rest of her life.

Mamie Till also worked as an activist, educating people on racial injustice and what happened to her son. She graduated from Chicago Teachers College (now Chicago State University) and received a master's degree in education administration from Loyola University in Chicago.

Mamie Till was even asked by the NAACP to go on a U.S.-wide tour to speak about her son. She also set up a group called "The Emmett Till Players" to help educate children about the civil rights movement.

In 2000, a demonstration for Emmett Till was held in Selma, Alabama on the 35th-anniversary of the march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Writing in her memoir, Mamie Till recalled: "I realized that Emmett had achieved the significant impact in death that he had been denied in life. Even so, I had never wanted Emmett to be a martyr. I only wanted him to be a good son. Although I realized all the great things that had been accomplished largely because of the sacrifices made by so many people, I found myself wishing that somehow we could have done it another way."

Elsewhere, for over 40 years she worked in the educations system to help children living in poverty.

On what would have been the 100th birthday of Mamie Till-Mobley, The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Institute was opened at the Northwestern University. It aims to "carry on Mobley's educational activism by exploring new ways and teaching one another," Professor Chris Benson told The Chicago Tribune.

Mamie Till married Gene Mobley and they remained together until his death in 2000. Mamie Till died on January 6, 2003, of heart failure.

Her memoir, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America, was published in 2003, 50 years after Emmett Till's death.

Women of the Movement will air back-to-back episodes every Thursday at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Each episode will be followed by an hour-long episode of the ABC News docuseries Let the World See, which examines Mamie Till-Mobley's life and activism.