Danielle Deadwyler

THE IMAGE OF EMMETT TILL'S MUTILATED CORPSE, MURDERED BY WHITE supremcists in 1955, changed the course of the Civil Rights movement.

- H. Alan Scott

That change came because of Mamie Till, Emmett's mother, who, despite her personal tragedy, knew what it could do for others. "She is the progenitor of a civil rights legacy that allowed for so many other acts of activism to occur," says Danielle Deadwyler, who plays Mamie in Till (in theaters, October 14). The role was "the hardest thing I've ever had to do," says Deadwyler. She and director Chinonye Chukwu "understood the weight of the work is beyond just making a piece of cinema, it's beyond just making a piece of art, it's a conversation with the world." While "Emmett walked into a cesspool of racial division," it was the "glorious bravery" of Mamie "to go into that fire and to come out of it, and then to go