Women of the Movement is an American historical drama Mini Series in six parts that premiered on ABC on January 6, 2022. Created and written by Marissa Jo Cerar, it stars Adrienne Warren, Tonya Pinkins, Gary Basaraba, Cedric Joe, Glynn Turman, Ray Fisher, Chris Coy, Julia McDermott, Carter Jenkins, Gil Bellows, Leslie Silva and Timothy Hutton. The series is based on the book Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement by Devery S. Anderson.
In 1955 Mississippi, black teen Emmett Louis Till is viciously lynched and murdered after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. His mother Mamie Till starts fighting to make sure he will not be forgotten and to get justice for him, and this will ultimately help to spawn the Civil Rights Movement.
Compare the film Till, which is about the same story and was released in October 2022.
Women of the Movement provides examples of the following tropes:
- The '40s: The series starts in 1941 with Emmett's birth.
- The '50s: The bulk of the story takes place just before and then after the murder of Emmett in 1955.
- Good Parent: Mamie has raised Emmett with love.
- The Savage South: Mamie is very worried that Emmett has to go to Mississippi, knowing how racially intolerant it is there compared to Chicago, and advises her son to keep a low profile. His lynching and murder there prove her right.
- Second Love: Gene Mobley is Mamie's boyfriend in 1955, and he's not Emmett's father. In Real Life, Emmett's father Louis Till was executed by the U.S. Army in 1945 after being found guilty of sexually assaulting two white women and murdering a third.
- Stock Footage: Following Emmett's birth, there is footage of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring that segregated schools are unconstitutional (in 1954), burning crosses and parades of the Ku Klux Klan and black demonstrations to put an end to segregation.
- Three-Month-Old Newborn: The baby actor used as newborn Emmett clearly wasn't newborn.
- Time Skip: There's a 14-year time skip following the birth of Emmett.
