Telling Emmett Till's story.

• Author: Pepus, Chris

Filmmaker Keith A. Beauchamp grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When he was ten, he found a copy of Jet magazine in his parents' study and saw a photograph of Emmett Till. "It just shocked me," says Beauchamp. "Emmett was fourteen years old, and it was like a mirror image of myself--this young boy who was murdered for whistling. I've always had that vision of Emmett Till's corpse etched in my head."

Beauchamp, director of the recently released documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, took it upon himself to solve the crime. Four decades after the 1955 murder, he began interviewing Till's relatives and other witnesses. After finding evidence that implicated suspects who are still alive, he and Emmett's mother pressured federal authorities to reopen the case. Mamie Till-Mobley died in 2003, but the FBI and prosecutors in Mississippi announced a new investigation of her son's murder in May 2004.

"I'm confident that indictments will take place," says the thirty-four-year-old filmmaker. "There are five people right now who could be charged for the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till."

In August 1955, Till left his native Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi. A few days after he arrived, he bought gum at a store owned by a white man named Roy Bryant. Roy was out of town and his wife, Carolyn, was managing the shop in his absence. The exact details of the incident have long been disputed, but the teenager somehow offended Mrs. Bryant. When Roy Bryant returned, he and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, planned savage retaliation. Armed and uttering threats, they took Emmett from his great-uncle's home at 2 a.m. on August 28.

Three days later, Till's body was found in the nearby Tallahatchie River. His face was horribly battered, and there was a gaping hole in his head. When the body was returned to Chicago, Emmett's mother, Mamie Till, held an open-casket funeral to let the public see what had happened to her son. Jet published a photo of the victim's mutilated face and Emmett Till became the symbol of countless victims of lynching. Back in Mississippi, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted Milam and Bryant of murdering Till, even though the two admitted kidnapping him. The case provoked international outrage and helped generate support for the civil rights movement.

Soon after the trial, a white, southern reporter named William Bradford Huie interviewed Bryant and Milam. Protected from further prosecution by their acquittal, the two...