Yesterday, several English teacher friends of mine and I, made our way to the AMC Ward Parkway theater to see the movie Till.
As a mother, the movie spoke to me. I have always felt like the most important job in my life is to be a good mother.
Mamie did too.
The movie depicts the tragedy of Emmet Till - the young black boy who, in 1955, was lynched and brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman.
The story told from the mother’s perspective, describes the tragic grief she experienced.
One of my friends said the movie depicted the mother as “too perfect” which did not make the movie as interesting.
I beg to differ with my friend.
That mother, Mamie Carthan Till Bradley Mobley, knew she was not perfect and she knew she had made a momentous mistake.
She knew she was the reason her son found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time -dead at the age of 14.
That mother’s imperfections lead her on a journey of self-improvement. Determined to right her own wrong, she changed the world!
The movie doesn’t tell us, but Mamie Carthan married a wife-beater at the age of 18. Smart enough to get away from Louis Till, she put a restraining order on him and the courts sent him to World War II where he met his demise.
Mamie and her second husband, Gene “Pinky” Bradley married for only two years ending their relationship in divorce. (I could not find out what happened in that relationship, but ending in divorce in the 50s gives you a clue.)
So, Mamie survived two terrible relationships and focused on raising her one-and-only son.
Emmet appeared in the movie as a happy-go-lucky teenager who liked music, singing, dancing, and watching TV.
Mamie did not have an easy childhood or early married life, but she worked hard to help her son get to that next level of the American Dream.
Mississippi, where she was born, was a foreign country for Emmett. Mamie tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. Emmett, spreading his know-it-all wings for the first time, made a tragic misjudgement.
A deadly mistake.
I could relate to this story as a mother, as a single mother, and as a high school teacher who knows how teenagers take risks and how teenagers think they understand the world.
Unlike my friend, I see Mamie as deeply flawed - as we all are.
How could she have let him go to that God-awful place?
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