news

Outreach Journal: The Murder of Emmett Till (Second Entry)

By
Posted on May 20, 2003

a documentary by Firelight Media

The Murder of Emmett Till aired nationwide on January 20, 2003 on PBS's premiere history series, American Experience. The documentary is about the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14 year-old black boy from Chicago, who is murdered for whistling at a white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi.

Since our first outreach installment in fall 2002, the days here at Firelight Media continue to be hectic and charged. Executive producer and filmmaker Stanley Nelson was named a 2002 MacArthur Fellow and The Murder of Emmett Till earned the 2003 Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January. But we were also saddened by the passing of Mrs. Till-Mobley, Emmett's mother, who died before she was scheduled to see the completed film. The press coverage that Firelight Media has received in the past several months has been considerable. Some readers of this article may be wondering: what can I do for outreach if my film is not captured in the media so widely? It is a very good question. But at its core, outreach is still about getting your viewer to become involved in some kind of activities, ready to align with your film's cause and eager to do something to elicit change. And no amount of press coverage can do that. We still have to provide some tools for viewers to make a first step.

Postcards with Power

The Murder of Emmett Till was screened at the 2002 African Diaspora Film Festival in Harlem in December. It was an ordinary screening except it took place at the height of the Trent Lott affair. The Mississippi senator praised Senator Strom Thurmond's segregationist past and the benefit to the nation had he been elected President in 1948. The audience reaction to the film was linked to these controversial comments. Many viewers asked: how has Mississippi really changed since 1955? There was a lot of raw emotion. In response to the strong audience reaction, we decided to create a preprinted postcard addressed to the Attorney General of Mississippi Michael Moore urging him to issue depositions to reopen the Emmett Till murder case. We distributed this postcard at all subsequent screenings in New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. To date, we estimate 8,000 to 10,000 postcards have been sent to the Attorney General's office. Kwesi Mfume, President and CEO of the NAACP, has also sent a letter to Mr. Moore urging him to reopen the case. The result? The Attorney General did respond that he is not able to reopen the case because the defendants are no longer alive. We continue to receive requests for postcards including a Chicago church for 5,000. And students from a Maryland high school sent a stack of letters for us to forward to the Attorney General. We have also been contacted by a few legal organizations who would like to become involved with reopening the Till case.

Quick Tips:

As a courtesy, we sent a letter to Attorney General Moore explaining the film and introducing Firelight Media before his office was besieged with the postcards.
Keep an eye out for timely issues in the media about your film's cause. Use this as an opportunity to piggy back with your film. Mississippi was in the media eye because of Senator Trent Lott's comments. People watching The Murder of Emmett Till could easily see the relevance of this 1955 story in today's contemporary political arena.
Exchange mailing lists with like-minded organizations. To cut down on mailing costs, target particular regions only and send information to those addresses.
Know who your target audience is. What concrete action can they take? This will help you focus on what can be done.

Outreach Funds Still Low But Not Thwarting The Campaign

In our previous outreach journal entry, we were focusing on submitting proposals to foundations to get outreach support. We still have not heard from many of these foundations. But we did secure corporate sponsorship with Prudential Financial (http://www.prudential.com/). Their support allowed three very well attended screenings to happen in New York, Chicago and Washington DC. We also received support from The National Black Programming Consortium (www.nbpc.tv) and The Hefner Foundation.

We did not meet our goal of hiring a national outreach coordinator. The bulk of the work ordinarily done by the person in this position was handled by Firelight Media staff. We worked closely with public relation teams in Chicago and Washington, DC. The outreach campaign is ongoing. We are still hopeful that some of the foundations we applied to will be able to support our outreach goals in some way.

Quick Tips:

Consider corporate sponsorship for your outreach efforts. The application process may be easier and with quicker turn around than applying to a foundation. Ask your board members or advisors who work for large firms how to go about it.
Bring everyone aboard to help out. Get interns and PA's to help run errands, to stamp your materials, to make follow up phone calls. Do what ever to keep the campaign going even with a small pool of funds and staff.

Websites

For four days after The Murder of Emmett Till aired on January 15th, the PBS Web site received more than 300 questions from viewers during a live online forum. That dialogue remains posted on the PBS site. The discussion was moderated by a panel of experts including the filmmaker and others featured in the film. We also posted the postcard to the Attorney General on our Web site. It's available to download.

Quick Tip:

Keep your website up to date and accessible to viewers who are looking for places to process their emotions and to taking action to support your film's core themes.

Going Forward

We still anticipate some support from foundations we applied to last fall. This will allow us to host more screenings nationwide and for Q & A sessions with the filmmaker. And we are also hoping for a second national broadcast on PBS. We look forward to working with young people through the National Conference for Community & Justice Midwest regional office and a local NAACP youth chapter in Virginia. We are very excited about a partnership with Facing History and Ourselves, which has a membership of 15,000 high school teachers. They will incorporate The Murder of Emmett Till into the Social Studies curriculum of their member schools.