Will Smith’s and JAY-Z’s joint project on the story of Emmett Till has finally found a home at ABC.
The series which focuses on Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley and her fight for justice in wake of her teen son’s gruesome lynching. Till-Mobley sent shockwaves through the nation after opting to have an open casket for her son’s funeral to display the atrocities of racism through Emmett’s mutilated body. Smith and Hov joined forces to bring Mamie Till-Mobley’s story to the fore as part of a larger anthology highlighting the role women played in the civil rights struggle aptly entitled, Women of the Movement. The series will take one notable woman of the movement per season to highlight.
The project was initially pitched and subsequently picked up by HBO and was framed as a singular story. However, once the project left from under the HBO banner it was rewritten as part of a larger body of work highlighting the role of women in the movement during the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond.