Wireimage / Getty Images Jay Z (l.) and Will Smith are collaborating on a new miniseries for HBO.
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In case you’re not up-to-date, here’s a brief history lesson: 14-year-old Chicago native Emmett was kidnapped and brutally murdered by two white men in 1955 after he reportedly flirted with a 21-year-old white woman while visiting family in Mississippi.
Actor Will Smith and rapper Jay Z are teaming up again to produce an untitled miniseries about Emmett Till.
Although little details are known about the project thus far, Entertainment Weekly reports that Roc Nation, Overbrook, and Kapital Entertainment are the production companies now tied to the project. It’s expected to have a of run six, hourlong episodes, and is in “active development”, though it does not yet have a writer attached. He was severely beaten and the teen’s mother insisted on an open casket funeral so the world could see what happened to her son.
The tragic story, which concluded with Till’s murderers being acquitted-even though they later admitted to the horrendous crime-is sure to resonate today in the wake of the deaths of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and, most recently, Sandra Bland.
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Till’s murder was considered a galvanizing force in the civil rights movement, and September marks the 60th anniversary of his death.
