In August 1955, 14-year-old African American Emmett Till was murdered for whistling at a white woman at a store in Money, Mississippi.
Till's mother held an open-casket funeral for her son to the public to demonstrate the brutality of racism in the Southern United States.
[2] His research and work conducting interviews for the film took over nine years, and ultimately contributed to the case being reopened by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004.
This number included five black employees of the five white men implicated in the murder, "as well as the woman that Till whistled at".
[8] Ronnie Scheib of Variety wrote, "Beauchamp expertly excerpts long stretches from the extensive television coverage of the 1955 events, juxtaposing them with present-day interviews with the people who lived though these traumatic happenings.