By Caleb White
A production by the University of Louisville African-American Theatre Program is now recognizing what some believe to be the key event in the start of the civil rights movement: the death of Emmett Louis Till.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the tragedy that claimed the 14-year-old boy’s life and started a movement that’s still alive today. “The Face of Emmett Till” was written by the boy’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and David Barr III, a writer for Ebony Magazine.
It’s a play that tells the story of Till’s life just before he leaves his home in south Chicago to visit his great uncle and cousins in Money, Miss.
The play covers the details of both Emmett’s death and the trial of the men who killed him, along with the suffering that resounded not only in his family, but in the entire black community.
The show’s cast includes over 10 actors from the undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of Louisville. In particular, Nyoka Boswell, a third-year graduate student in the AATP, is performing the role of Mamie Till-Mobley as her thesis project. Under the guidance of Dr. Lundeana Thomas, show director and director of the AATP, Nyoka is looking to make this her most outstanding performance, since it represents all of her work as a performer at U of L.
The show, which kicks off the university’s theater season, runs nightly at 8 p.m. in the Playhouse, located on Third Street, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2. There is also a matinee on Sunday at noon, after which there will be a talk-back with the director, cast and special guests David Barr III and Rev. Louis Coleman.
“Mamie Till wanted people to see this, to promote healing between our races,” Thomas said. “The African-American Theatre Program needs to tell the truth so that people will know what happened and that we will not repeat these same mistakes.”
