The Mother of The Civil Rights Movement: A Conversation with ‘Till’ Screenwriter and Producer Keith Beauchamp
Keith Beauchamp shares with Script his connection to the material, his turn from becoming studying to become a civil rights attorney to becoming a filmmaker and a friend of Mother Mobley, finding his filmmaking family, writing the script from Mother Mobley’s point of view, and so much more.
Directed by Chinonye Chukwu with a screenplay by Michael Reilly & Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu, Till tells the heartbreaking true story of the historic lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till — for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi in 1955 — through the eyes of his mother Mamie Till-Mobley. This is what makes the film so compelling, it’s told from the perspective and experience of a Black woman and is co-written and directed by a Black woman.
Mamie Till-Mobley is a widowed single mother who is the head of her household, the only Black woman working for the Air Force in Chicago. Till-Mobley becomes a revolutionary by insisting that the world witness the horror of her brutally maimed son’s body in an open casket viewing as an act of defiance against oppression and hate. “I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy," she said at the time. Till-Mobley also gave the exclusive rights to Jet Magazine to publish the images of her son’s maimed body which caused the lynching to gain worldwide noteriety. A mother’s audacity became a lightning rod in the Civil Rights Movement and propelled her to reluctantly become an outspoken activist for the NAACP advocating for social justice and education.
Till is a film of its time and of the present, historically and narratively. The filmmakers collectively recreated, delicately and pointedly, a harrowing story that unspeakably changed history, and continues to do so. Emmett Till's name is synonymous with the continued racial atrocities we see as a society in America and around the world, but there is hope that his and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley's stories will resurrect an era of justice, for good.
It's rare to have the opportunity to have a conversation with a social justice warrior that has dedicated their livelihood to a cause and who also had a direct personal connection to the mother of the civil rights movement. I had that rare opportunity recently with Keith Beauchamp, Till co-screenwriter, producer, and a dear friend of Mother Mobley.
Keith passionately shared with Script his connection to the material, his turn from studying to become a civil rights attorney to becoming a filmmaker and a friend of Mother Mobley, finding his filmmaking family, writing the script from Mother Mobley's point of view, and so much more.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
Sadie Dean: You've been living with this for so long and I'm so glad that you and your team collectively made this. Unfortunately, it's still very timely, but I think it’s going to do a lot of good change and hopefully make Hollywood use its powers for good.
Keith Beauchamp: Yeah [laughs] it took over 60 years for it to be made. And I don't think people realize the history behind all this. Not just my attempt alone to make the film but others who have tried along the way – so much history behind this. It's truly a remarkable feat. It's a blessing to be involved with this project and also I want it to have an impact on Hollywood as you stated, because it's been so hard to get these types of films produced for the theater. So that just opened more doors for our stories to be told.
Sadie: I hope so too. What was the whole process behind getting the script written to it finally getting made?
Keith: There were attempts made by myself in my career to get this film made and back before I produced the documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, the research that was done on that project was research to develop a screenplay, which I wrote a screenplay to the best of my ability at that time, which was eventually optioned by producers who worked with Showtime and that was in early ‘95.
They optioned the project, but they sat on it. They didn't know what to do with it. And it was basically shelved, I had no control because it was optioned off. It was because of that option agreement, that I was eventually forced to do the documentary because I was coming across evidence in the case that needed to be exposed to the public. And, of course, the documentary with the encouragement of Mother Mobley, the documentary was produced. And so, all the research that I had done to develop the screenplay at the time, was eventually used to produce the documentary that led to the reopening of the case in 2014.
Sadie: Wow, what a journey.
Keith: Yeah. So, my life has completely come full circle. Having an opportunity to pursue the feature because that's all I wanted to do in the beginning. [laughs] And then became a filmmaker and build a name for myself by way of the documentary.
Sadie: That’s so amazing, especially going from a narrative script, documentary, back to narrative. What was that process like for building a narrative behind the facts?
Keith: I'm gonna be honest with you, I was an unintentional filmmaker. I was not trained to write screenplays, but I had a passion to tell this story since I was 10 years old. When I first came across the story, I was in my parent's study, I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I came across an old Jet Magazine that they kept over the years. As I opened the pages, of course, I discovered the horrific photographs of Emmett Till. And my parents came into the study and explained the story to me, the way they learned the story, because it was during their time and throughout my life, the name Emmett Till resurfaced when I got to high school. The first thing my parents would tell me before I left the house at night was, ‘What happened to Emmett Till could happen to you.’ So it became an educational tool to teach me about the racism that still exists in this country. But it wasn't until two weeks before my high school graduation, I had my real run-in with racism. And that was when I was assaulted by an undercover police officer for dancing with a white classmate of mine. My mother forewarned me and it’s now coming true. So, the only thing I could think about when I was being assaulted by this undercover police officer was Emmett Till and I vowed that if I got myself out of that situation, I would put myself in a position of power to make sure that these type of acts would never happen to a person of color again.
I began to study criminal justice in hopes of becoming a civil rights attorney. Towards my junior year of college I was introduced to filmmaking by my childhood best friend who moved to New York City and started a film production company with his sister. And that's how I was introduced to filmmaking. I told my parents let me sit out a semester. If things didn't work out ,I was gonna go back to finish undergrad and go to law school as I planned. And it was at a company meeting I was asked if there was a story that I wanted to tell, what would it be? And the story of Emmett Till came foremost in my mind, and that's when I started doing research on Emmett Till.
The whole issue of appropriation was going on at that time as well in the early 90s people were talking about who's telling our stories. You hear from the Black community, ‘not enough of our stories are being told by us,’ and there was a story, and I felt strongly about telling and I said before I even pursue it, I have to have the blessings of Emmett Till's mother, and that's when I decided to reach out to her.
That was late ‘95 when I reached out to her. I had a side job, as everybody does in this industry when you're first starting, [laughs] didn't know what kind of abilities I would have in telling these stories. I just knew I had to tell this. So, I had started writing the screenplay before I actually reached out to her and had a screenplay done - and that was the screenplay that was eventually optioned. So I cold called her, she picks up the phone, and I quickly hung up. I was afraid. I was young, mid-20s, didn't know what the hell I was doing, didn't know what type of life Mother Mobley was living. I didn't want to open up old wounds.
And then of course, I realized I'm speaking to someone that I consider to be the mother of the civil rights movement. I gathered myself and gathered the courage and I called her again and as soon as she picked up the phone I quickly apologized to her and told her my name, and that was me that called earlier and a hug up. And I told her why. And she could sense I was very nervous in which I was, and I just began to tell her how much Emmett Till was a part of my life, and how I grew up knowing the story and I felt the need to reach out to her because I have this dream of telling this story on the big screen. And from that phone call, we actually talked for two and a half hours, I was talking about my passion to tell the story and she got to know me. I know she was feeling me out.
It was 1996 and we finally met face to face. And I went to Chicago with my best friend, and we met her and we just really clicked and became close. Because at that time I had just lost my grandmother she filled that void of me losing her. I like to believe in what she said to other people that I sort of filled that void of not replacing Emmett but being someone there who she can talk to. And we just became extremely close for about eight and a half years. She was m friend and mentor until she took her last breath.
Sadie: That is beautiful. I just got goosebumps from that story. And that you were able to build that kind of relationship with her. When you told her about making a movie about her son Emmett, what was her initial reaction?
Keith: Well, she was excited. And I have to be honest Sadie, I didn't know if she believed me or not because I was just a young kid talking about big things. In fact, I don't think she ever, I won't say she didn't think I would have achieved this because she mapped my whole career out, I have to say that. Mapped everything. So, it wasn't like I didn't know my path. I understood my path now, but being young and take on such a task, it was a lot of weight on my shoulders. It wasn't just about telling the story just to educate people about Emmett's case, it was also a tool that I felt could be used to bump the case to be reopened and to get justice done.
Having the pitfall of having a screenplay that I'm happy that was never produced [laughs] to having it optioned off was the best thing that could have happened because it allowed me to go dig deeper into the story, and into five witnesses who have never spoken publicly before, and to gather enough evidence that will ultimately lead to the reopening of the case by way of the documentary. The only reason why the documentary was produced was because of the option agreement, I didn't have control of a feature. It was going to be very hard for me to produce a feature film - I was not a writer. I wasn't a director. It was my first project I'm working on another side of things, the encouragement of Mother Mobley to get this information out to the masses quickly, she said to me, ‘We're going to have to produce a documentary to use that as a stepping stone to get the case reopened and if everything works out as planned, then I will ultimately have an opportunity to tell the stories.’
Sadie: She was brilliant, she just knew.
Keith: She knew how to use the media to bring awareness to her son's story. And so, my life has been juggling the case and telling the story visually. For over 29 years of my life has been dedicated to this mission and two things that she wanted. One is to make sure justice is done in her son's case which I promised - and actually, there are three - the second thing would be to have a hate crime law named after Emmett Till, which we have too, and of course, the last thing that Emmett's story hits the big screen, because that was something that she had tried to do back in the early ‘50s herself. Right after her son's murder, she in fact had two movie deals, and so she was trying to tell the story 47 years of her life, she had hoped to get the story to the big screen. Everything that I've done Sadie, has been done because of what she wanted done.
Sadie: I'm so glad that you made that phone call. And like you said it's not a task, it's a big responsibility, but to do it with determination and dedication and love behind it.
Keith: Absolutely. And not only that, it's not just Mother Mobley, it's other family members that I became close with along the way. Simeon Wright, which you probably know this already because Emmett Till shared a bed with him, he was a consulting producer on the project, so he helped with the script as well before his passing. And a lot of information that I gathered came from witnesses who know the story. We had the material and this film between Michael [Reilly] and I; we've written it in every type of way they could have been written, but we all felt strongly that it had to be made from Mamie's point of view. And of course, that was the biggest choice and the best choice that we made for the timing of this because, it's strange, Hollywood is strange, different times, and decades, the film could've looked a different way.
Sadie: Right.
Keith: So, I have to say 2014-2015 is really when we started digging deep in the work and writing Till. And it was myself, and Michael Reilly, who teamed up to do it after failed attempts of getting writers on board to write it. We didn't have a big budget yet. We didn't have any big money, but even the people that we would go to wanted more time sitting with me. They wanted to travel with me. It was something that I didn't want to experience, because I felt the need of getting this story told now. I just needed someone to work with me to get this story out of my head and on paper.
Sadie: Right, you’ve already done all the heavy lifting. They just need to help you get the story on the page.
Keith Fred Zoloo and Thomas Levine had approached me about working with them to tell the story. And this was right after the case reopened in 2004. And so, I met with Fred and Tom, and it was a no-brainer for me because I was a huge fan of Fred Zollo's work. He's been the most successful in getting civil rights films produced and of course, his two major films are on civil rights were Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi. And so, Till for him would be what we called his “Tilligi.” [laughs] It was very easy to work with Fred because I was a fan of his work. I understood what film can actually do, because when he was involved with the Mississippi Burning story, that story brought a lot of awareness to the case, which ultimately led to the reopening. I felt we could do the same thing with Till if we were able to produce it.
It was just a journey to get there and took a lot of patience [laughs] of course a lot of time, because no one would ever say that it would take so long to produce such a film. But this is something that Hollywood had never made and I believe refused to make at one time because of the timing of it all.
I began to think of other avenues to get this story out of my head onto paper and it just so happened Michael, who's a friend of Fred was around the office. And he kept saying, let's sit down and Fred was trying to encourage us to write the treatment and I said to Michael and Fred, ‘Mike if we're gonna sit down and write this we're gonna write this. I don't want to do a treatment. I just need help getting what's in my head out of my head and onto paper.’ And at that time too Sadie, this was a transformative moment in my life, because of the fact people don't realize I only knew the elder Mamie, the more posh, the more together woman, the matured woman, the elder, I didn't know the 33-year-old woman that we would be actually writing about. So, I even had to educate myself about the woman that I thought I knew.
Sadie: Yeah, and her voice is so strong in this film. This is her movie. How did you tap into that?
Keith: Well, a lot of it came from us having just normal conversations that you would have with someone. It wasn't really about Till. A lot of people think that all our conversations were about Till. No, it wasn't. It was about life lessons, and we would sit down, and we'll talk. But when we talk about Till - she would talk to me about some things and I would quickly be pushing them back in my head to change the subject, because I didn’t feel comfortable hearing this story time and time again, but when we did the documentary, I sat down with her and that was the first time we had an extensive conversation. I had detailed questions about what transpired in 1955. So that helps a lot. If you see The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, she anchors it. So, we wanted to tell a story from her POV which we were able to do with the feature - the narrative.
I'm an emotional person, so this is not just a film project for me. This is my life. My personal experience with this great woman who has sculpted me into the person I've become and so, a lot of those feelings were very raw when we started writing the screenplay. And it took me a while to open up enough to understand exactly the story we wanted to tell. Because there's so much story, I mean so many different things you can pull out of the Till story. It's the trial of the century. It started the media revolution in this country. Not even talking about the historical context story for American history, there's so much to say. But I do have to acknowledge there were key things that Mother Mobley used to tell me all the time. She would tell me often you probably read anything about me you probably heard me say this, because I say it all the time. She always used to tell me you know, ‘Keith, you must continuously tell Emmett’s story until man’s consciousness has risen. Only then will there be justice for Emmett Till.’
For the longest time, I didn't know and understand what she was saying. Because again, I'm in my middle 20s, it would go in one ear and go out the other. [laughs] But as I grew older and matured and understanding this story, I realized what she was trying to say in those words was prophetic in many ways. What she was trying to tell me was that no matter how long I fight, to get justice for Emmett, I may even attain courtroom justice, she felt that I would be able to do, it's not going to stop all the other Till's around the world from happening. And then that brought me back to deep conversations that we would have about Emmett Till in 1955 and how she was able to get the media support. And she always felt guilty about how the media all went to her when there were other mothers suffering who as well lost their loved ones and never got the media attention.
That was another promise that I gave, no matter what happens with Till, if I have a bigger platform, I'll make sure that I'll provide a platform for those families as well because she fought until her last breath, not only to get justice for her son, but to help these other mothers who lost their loved ones. She wanted to make sure that they had platforms, and she actually lent her voice to a lot of those.
I think time had a lot with us choosing Mother Mobley's POV ultimately to tell the story, because it's reflective to what we're seeing today and what we've seen for decades. It's just over the years, people had somehow changed the language of what has happened in 1955 to Emmett Till, to what is happening today with those who are losing their lives, the Black and brown [people] who are losing their lives at the hands of people sworn to protect us, as well as white supremacy. And it's all about wordplay is what I'm saying to you Sadie, because even in 1955 a lot of civil rights organizations would not support Mother Mobley because she was calling her son's [murder] a lynching, it was wordplay. And what I'm saying to you is what we're seeing today and why this great disconnect from what we saw what I consider to be Emmett Till's of today versus just opposed to what actually Emmett Till and what befell him, these are legalized lynchings what we're seeing in America. And when you call it a simple killing or murder, there's no sense of urgency to change anything but once you call it a lynching then, it catches your attention more and there's a sense of urgency that these things must stop.
That's exactly what she was trying to tell me when she was with us, and I didn't get it until after she passed and after I had time to think about and reflect on the things that we would discuss and talk about. That all became the impetus, I should say the nucleolus of just telling the story from her POV because mothers related to what we're seeing today, it’s no different from what we saw in 1955. These are transgenerational ideals that may have changed cosmetically but it remains the same, the fight is still the same.
I say often there's no other story that speaks to this generation, this political and racial climate, then the story of Emmett Till. If you go back and look at what transpired in 1955 during Emmett Till's lynching, then you will understand what I'm saying. It is like literally putting a mirror in front of America's face when you tell this story, because it's what we're dealing with right now. Everything that they were dealing with in 1955 we're dealing with right now, and you could see Mother Mobley and all these mothers who lost their loved ones. And many of them would tell you and I know that Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton just wrote an article about this. Many of them will tell you they channel Mother Mobley and bravery and courage because they don't want their loved ones to die in vain either.
I want to say perfect timing. I feel that there is a time of season for all things. I became very faithful in dealing with this case and this story, and I think this is the time. This is set in stone by Mother Mobley herself, who was clairvoyant. A lot of people don't know that. And my biggest challenge has been to keep the faith and be patient. And finally, it happened.
Sadie: It's all about timing. That’s so interesting that you bring up her being clairvoyant, in that opening scene --
Keith: -- there you go. [laughs]
Sadie Dean: -- there's that look on her face, as if she's seeing something, a premonition or something of the sort. The superpowers of mothers, I suppose. But that look expressed by Danielle Deadwyler says it all.
Keith: Danielle did a marvelous performance.
Sadie: Phenomenal.
Keith: All I ever wanted to do Sadie was to resurrect my mentor. I wanted people to meet the great woman that was in my life, who made me realize that I had the ability as an individual to cause change in my own way. She was an inspiration to many. Her son's case was the impetus to many civil rights leaders coming into activism. It's a very important story. By telling it from her POV I think was the best choice that we could have ever made, considering the time and what we're witnessing across the country. I've always done thorough research because coming from the documentary standpoint, but of course, a narrative is a totally different discipline, which is why I didn't even consider myself directing. I wanted to, but I was too close to the story.
So, everything that I wrote about Till I wanted on screen. [laughs] But thank God I had Michael Reilly, and Fred, who are always challenging me on what we should see on screen and what we should not. I was just an open book, an open resource to all the information we needed to tell this story. When Michael and I continued to write and challenge each other and get everything on paper, it was wonderful to usher in of course Chinonye [Chukwu] whose expertise was dealing with intimate character-driven story. She came in and she did what she needed to do to feel comfortable with the script, and it was produced.
Sadie: Again, it's all about timing.
Keith: Everything, not just from the writing standpoint - I have to say, Fred, Barbara [Broccoli], and Whoopi [Goldberg], they believed in me. They believed in me enough to stick with me for over 18 years and make sure this film is made. That's the biggest thing to get people to believe in you because they could have easily went off and did their own projects. They have to believe in me enough to stick with me for so long to make this happen. And that's what I'm grateful for.
Sadie: And that says so much in them believing in you and Mother Mobley believing in you.
Keith: Exactly! And supporting me. Having that support helped greatly. There were times where I had meltdowns, because I wanted the film out a lot sooner, But I knew that it was gonna happen. I just knew I had to be a little more patient. There were a lot of other producers who came in and out of my life even before Fred and Barbara and even in Mother Mobley's life, people have come in and out of her life trying to produce the future film and it just never came to fruition. I felt when Fred, Barbara, myself, and Tom, and Whoopi got together, of course over time, we became family. So, I didn't want to do this with anybody else. And so, I stuck with my family and finally, the film was made, and everything fell into place and they hired Chinonye and that was a great thing to have her on board and have her work in sync with us.
Sadie: Aesthetically it’s a beautiful movie too. But I’m hoping more audiences get out to see this on the big screen and I hope it's one of those things that Mother Mobley’s name is also within the same breath as someone like Rosa Parks.
Keith: Yes! I'm happy about it. I get to travel lately and I'm screening the film for schools and different organizations. I've been going back into the communities in Mississippi where this happened, and we got a huge screening at Mound Bayou which we cover in the story. And watching those who know the story, who lived it, who was there at the time witnessing them, experience the film and the wonderful things that they say after, I mean, it's such a great feeling to be able to facilitate and to tell the story in a way where it's reaching a lot of people. It's changing people. It's really changing people. Something that Mother Mobley knew was going to happen when people saw her story. She always used to tell me, the only way we're going to be successful by telling the story is by making sure that we don't embellish, we don't use creative licensing, those type of things. She was like, just tell the story the way it happened.
Till is available in select Theaters and Digital.
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Sadie Dean is the Editor of Script Magazine and writes the screenwriting column, Take Two, for Writer’s Digest print magazine. She is also the co-host of the Reckless Creatives podcast. Sadie is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, and received her Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from The American Film Institute. She has been serving the screenwriting community for nearly a decade by providing resources, contests, consulting, events, and education for writers across the globe. Sadie is an accomplished writer herself, in which she has been optioned, written on spec, and has had her work produced. Additionally, she was a 2nd rounder in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and has been nominated for The Humanitas Prize for a TV spec with her writing partner. Sadie has also served as a Script Supervisor on projects for WB, TBS and AwesomenessTV, as well as many independent productions. She has also produced music videos, short films and a feature documentary. Sadie is also a proud member of Women in Film.
Follow Sadie and her musings on Twitter @SadieKDean
