That context has made “Women of the Movement” even more personal and heartfelt for creator and executive producer Marissa Jo Cerar. It’s the latest chapter in a decades-long struggle. Will this time be any different?ĪBC, CBS, NBC and Fox have pledged to improve diversity in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Television TV networks pledged to improve diversity in 1999. It also comes at a time when racial tensions are especially volatile, fueled by the rise of white nationalism and an ongoing debate between those who wish to confront America’s racist past and those who want to downplay it.

Premiering Thursday and airing over three consecutive weeks, the six-episode series is one of the most powerful - and potentially risky - projects revolving around race ever developed by a broadcast network. The brutality of his death - he was tortured and lynched - and lingering questions that hampered the quest for justice for years placed the killing beyond Hollywood’s reach.ĪBC steps into that void this week with its limited series “Women of the Movement,” which shines a new light on Till and his mother. But while many key events in the history of the movement have been examined in documentaries and dramatized by film and TV, Till’s slaying has not been a major focal point in these efforts.

That horrific act, and the determined battle by Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, to punish those responsible, was a catalyst for the formation of the civil rights movement that gained national momentum in the 1960s. But such incidents were preceded decades earlier by another galvanizing crime: the 1955 kidnapping and killing of the 14-year-old Till in the Jim Crow South after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in a grocery store. In recent years, the killings of these Black Americans and numerous others have been fiery sparks propelling the Black Lives Matter movement, culminating in the racial reckonings of 2020. Before Trayvon Martin, before Breonna Taylor, before Ahmaud Arbery and before George Floyd, there was Emmett Till.

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