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Outreach Journal: The Murder of Emmett Till

By
Posted on November 20, 2002

a documentary by Firelight Media

Firelight Media is near completion of The Murder of Emmett Till (working title), a one-hour documentary that will air nationwide on January 20, 2003 on PBS's premiere history series American Experience. In late September, we received the extraordinary news that Firelight's co-founder and filmmaker, Stanley Nelson was named a 2002 MacArthur Genius Fellow. Before the announcement, we were planning our outreach campaign without an airdate (we were guessing Spring 2004). Suddenly, we received an airdate on the Martin Luther King Holiday. This has put us in a kind of frenzy to raise funds for an outreach campaign that should already be underway.

CAMPAIGN GOAL

In August 1955, Emmett Till, a 14 year-old black boy from Chicago, is murdered for whistling at a white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Emmett's maimed and disfigured body is found floating in the Tallahatchie river. His killers, two white men, are acquitted in a sham trial by an all white jury.

But the story would have ended there if not for the extraordinary decision of Emmett's mother, Mamie Till, who decided to leave his casket open during the funeral. Gruesome photos appeared in the national and international press. Emmett Till's murder spurred mass outrage and became one of the key sparks of the civil rights movement. Three months later the Montgomery bus boycott began.

The Till murder happened almost fifty years ago, yet the themes and issues around this case still confound our contemporary society: racial profiling, hate crimes, personal/civic responsibility and community organizing. Our outreach campaign is intended to motivate viewers to reflect on these themes, and take some action in response to what they see in the documentary.

We are anxious to maximize the educational impact of the film on our core audience of young people, people of color, immigrants, gay or lesbian and anti-hate crime activists. We expect the documentary will strike a chord particularly among young people, many of who continue to feel their own vulnerability to violence.

CHALLENGES

We feel very lucky to have The Murder of Emmett Till as part of the prestigious American Experience series. We can be sure that they will launch a broad national advertising campaign with press in major national newspapers, magazines and the radio. American Experience will also create a Web site and a teachers guide, available on the website.

Our efforts at Firelight Media, however, will focus on outreach to those organizations and potential viewers who may not be within American Experience's radar, especially young people of color. We won't duplicate what American Experience will do. In fact, we'll work very closely with them in order to build a national outreach campaign that will extend to those viewers we feel could benefit most from seeing The Murder of Emmett Till.

Firelight Media has a solid track record as a film production company, but we are new to doing broad national outreach. So naturally, we had a lot of questions. How much would it cost? We did some research. We studied the outreach models in the Outreach Toolkit published by MediaRights.org and AIVF, consulted with community organizers, and talked with outreach professionals and funders. In the end, we decided the way to our answers was quite simple: host a brainstorming meeting, let the organizations we hope will use the film tell us what they want.

Our invitees included: an interdenominational advocacy organization, a grassroots human rights organization, youth media organizations and a national education organization, among others.

We asked them the following questions:

  • How could their organization use the film? What format is best?
  • What fresh ideas exist for projects beyond what is standard in most outreach campaigns? For example, we are planning a travelling photography exhibition. How to prepare the photographs?
  • How much would these outreach activities cost? Who would bear the cost?
  • How to reach young people?
  • Should we focus only on certain geographical regions?

FEEDBACK

Last July, we had our half-day brainstorming meeting at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Eight organizations were present, while we consulted with others unable to attend the meeting. Here are some of the major ideas we learned from them:

1. Viewers will definitely have a strong reaction after watching The Murder of Emmett Till. So offer some way for viewers to process their emotions.

  • Group screenings: specifically targeted for a young audience or for activists in training so that people can talk with each other.
  • Public Discussions: invite viewers to talk about the film in an open forum hosted by a facilitator.

2. Link 1955 to today. Viewers, especially a young audience must see the connection between Emmett Till's murder nearly fifty years ago and similar violence in our society today.

  • Hold screenings with related films. Screen The Murder of Emmett Till with documentaries featuring recent incidences of police brutality and hate crimes.
  • Interactive Web site: use audio and video plug-ins to engage young adult viewers with a spoken word poet reading or performing a poem about Emmett Till.

3. Viewers will need study materials tailored to their needs.

  • Regional study guides: include a "Hot Topics" page of social issues relevant to a particular region, with a contact page of resources where viewers can get more information in that area.
  • Targeted Viewer guides: create separate guides for use in activist training workshops and by community organizers.
  • Shortened versions for educational use. An hour-long film is too long to show in most classrooms. Divide the film into (2) half-hour segments or (3) 20 minute segments.

NEXT STEPS

Over the next two or three months we will concentrate most on the following:

  • Getting outreach funds. Our July brainstorm meeting gave us information to submit fuller grant proposals. We are currently submitting letters of intent and proposals to all possible funders and waiting for responses. . .
  • Hiring a national outreach coordinator to oversee the entire campaign.
  • Hosting another meeting, with five or six key organizations committed to partnering with us.
  • Generating Buzz. At the moment, Firelight Media is getting a lot of media attention due to Stanley's MacArthur award. So he has been mentioning The Murder of Emmett Till during interviews for radio, newspapers and magazines.

SUGGESTIONS

The brainstorming meeting was very helpful to us and I highly recommend it to other filmmakers. Here are some suggestions that may help you plan a brainstorm meeting of your own:

  • Determine whose "brains you need to tap" to shape a compelling outreach campaign. We made a long list of names around these categories: tech / web gurus, grassroots activists, youth rights advocates, youth mediamakers, criminal justice advocates, political / legal advocates, interfaith organizations, educators and a curator / museum director.
  • Set a date and time. It was impossible to schedule a date and time convenient with everyone. So, we selected three people we absolutely had to meet with and allowed the meeting to happen when they could be present.
  • Find a location. Ask a board member or advisor to reserve a conference room where he/she works. Send a written request with details of what you need for the meeting (chairs, monitor, VCR, etc.).
  • Send invitations by email. Include: an agenda for the meeting with a few points for participants to think about beforehand, a summary of your documentary and directions to your meeting location.
  • Follow-up phone calls are necessary. Email is a fantastic tool, but a lot goes unread or to the trash. Let your passion about your outreach project become connected with a human voice. Over the phone, I was able to get referrals and outreach ideas from people not able to make our meeting but still wanting to participate in some way.
  • Show a "rough cut" segment of your documentary and encourage the filmmaker to attend. We screened a portion of The Murder of Emmett Till with Stanley Nelson, the filmmaker and director. This was the first time the film was seen outside of the Firelight Media office. So it was a real education for us to hear feedback.
  • Create a sign up list at the meeting. Make this list available to each participant so that everyone can continue to connect after the meeting.