My Nephew Emmett

Kevin Wilson Jr.’s short film My Nephew Emmett (2017) is as devastating as the movie’s premise would suggest. It is Aug. 28, 1955, and 14-year-old Emmett Till is taken in the middle of the night from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by the husband of a white woman Till reportedly whistled at earlier that day. L.B. Williams plays Till’s Uncle Mose Wright, who was unable to protect his nephew from the hate white folks were steeped in. The moment when he begs the raging husband (Ethan Leaverton) to take him and not the boy evokes disdain and pity, which are key to appreciating this film. One must understand how powerlessness works and see how anguishing it is.