, premiering on Jan. 6, sets out to tell the compelling story of educator and activist Mamie Till-Mobley, whose sonwas brutally murdered at the age of 14 by two white men after being accused of whistling at a white woman in 1955. Folks already familiar with this political flashpoint know of her decision to have Till’s corpse shipped from Mississippi, where he was murdered, to her home in Chicago and hold an open-casket funeral so the world could see his mutilated body.
With an elite ensemble of Black, female directors and “women” in its title, the limited series wants to correct male-dominated retellings of Black history and center women in the struggle for Black liberation. However, the series, based partially on her autobiography, doesn’t seem to know why it’s interested in Till-Mobley as a subject beyond the popular narratives, well-touted information about her activism, and for the sake of honoring her memory.
Beyond what her son’s tragedy would come to represent to the world, Till-Mobley’s story is one of deep personal reckoning—which she’s referred to as a “death of innocence”—about her community and her own existence as a Black person in the United States. It’s a violent and intense emotional trajectory to go from a place of relative comfort and indifference to staring white supremacists in the face.
Maternity as an entry point for understanding the political location of Black women has proven to be problematic. In the age of Black Lives Matter, Black mothers have been unwillingly thrust into the national spotlight, symbolizing the pain, trauma and fear of their community due to state violence while being lionized for their resilience.
, considering the ways Till-Mobley’s life has been narrowly defined in relation to her son’s death. This isn’t to downplay or negate the centrality of Till’s murder to the later course of her life. Rather, I don’t trust men to capture the totality of her experience as a Black woman and a mother without promoting the false notion that Black women are secondary recipients of racist violence and that our contributions to the cause are primarily for the safety of Black men.
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