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Jay Z, Will Smith to tell Emmett Till story

Jayme Deerwester
USA TODAY
Will Smith and Jay Z will co-produce an HBO miniseries on the murder of Emmett Till, a touchstone of the civil rights movement.

Will Smith and Jay Z are among the producers partnering with HBO to tell the story of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed in 1955 after being accused of flirting with a white woman in Mississippi.

Till, a 14-year-old Chicagoan visiting family in Money, Miss., spoke with Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the town grocer. A few nights later, on Aug. 28, he was taken to a barn by Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, who murdered him. They beat him, gouged out one eye and shot him through the head before weighing his body down and throwing it in the Tallahatchie River.

Till's mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world would see what had been done to her son. Although his death became a touchstone for civil rights activists in Mississippi, it eventually led police to support his killers.

After their September 1955 acquittal, Bryant and Milam admitted to killing Till in a magazine interview, fully aware of their rights shielding them from being prosecuted again

Till would have turned 74 Saturday.

News about the HBO miniseries, expected to span six hours, was reported first on Deadline.com.

Smith and Jay Z previously worked together on last year's Annie remake starring Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhané Wallis.

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