Women of the Movement (TV Series) Mother and Son (2022) User Reviews

A true story

[duvernaycpu · 10/10 · 7 February 2022]

1st part of events that unfolded when a Chicago teenage African American boy visits the south in 1955 unrealizing a harmless dare lands him in unjustified circumstances because of the so called racist "Jim Crow" laws of the southeastern United States during that time.

It is very well produced however it cant provide enough substance to justify the brutality of what happened to this innocent person without actually being witness at the time of the offense.

There IS wonder however as to just how MANY viewers in the "former Jim Crow South" states who turned the channel when they saw what happened in this story and became ignorant and didnt want to admit this REALLY happened............... ...............Unfortunately we live in a society where MANY think that EXACT way to THIS day.

Historical account that pasteurizes the brutality

[staffordgorsalitz · 6/10 · 14 January 2022]

I looked forward to seeing this story rendered to the big or small screen after reading Devery S Anderson's account a couple of years ago.

Although this filmed version provides a detailed account or the tragic events that led to the beginning of the civil rights movement , it misses the mark.

When Emmett Till was kidnapped , beaten , and murdered, it was his mother who insisted that his memorial be an open casket . She wanted the world to see the brutality that was foisted upon her 14 year old son at the hands of two racist bigots .

What this mini series does however is pasteurize the events that night . It, for all intents and purposes, closes the casket door, preventing the viewer from seeing the results of the evil endured by one young boy on that fateful evening.

His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley passed away in 2003 and I can only imagine how this miniseries would have been presented if she had been present to provide her input.

For viewers not familiar with Emmett's story the depiction in this miniseries provides a pasteurized filtered depiction of the brutality that was perpetrated that night. We see him travel south from his Chicago home into the Deep South . We see him warned to mind his ways when he gets there. And we see him engage a white clerk in a store . From there we see him kidnapped in the middle of the night and then jump right to his memorial.

The gist and genesis and purpose that drove Ms. Till-Mobley to fire the engine of the civil rights movement is absent . And, as much as many of us have turned an unwilling blind eye to the Jim Crowe era in the United States, we needed this miniseries to force us to confront that brutality . It needed to show us what happened to young Emmett. How he was beaten and bound with barbed wire and dragged behind a vehicle . By choosing not to depict what transpired or even showing the viewer the contents of his casket , the producers have lessened the impact of what transpired that fateful evening .

His mother , I'm sure would have said he deserved more . As she refused to let the funeral shield the world from seeing the brutal reality of racism in America so too should the producers here have honour those intentions .