You can’t talk about Keith Beauchamp’s documentary without mentioning Stanley Nelson’s film The Murder of Emmett Till, which un-covered much of the same ground two years earlier. Both directors overlook the work of Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems, who told the story first in her dissertation and books. The 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Chicagoan Till by white storeowners in Mississippi for “wolf-whistling” at a white woman was the jump-off for the civil-rights movement. Beauchamp’s documentary targets those nearest to the lynching – an act so gruesome that the body could be identified only by a ring — including eyewitnesses to the murder and the cover-up. He also talks to Henry Lee Loggins, a black guy suspected of helping his white employers kidnap and kill Till, though likely unwillingly. While Nelson’s doc covered the same ground, the difference is that Beauchamp is talking to the Feds, and he convinced them to re-open the case. Penn Hills (BM)

This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2006.