A recent Journal Star story detailed the efforts to get the Chicago church where, in 1955, tens of thousands viewed the mutilated body of Emmett Till declared a city landmark. That alone is evidence of the rekindled interest in the savage murder of the 14-year-old boy that helped ignite the civil rights movement.

Some of that rekindled interest is the result of “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” a harrowingly powerful documentary that forced the U.S. Justice Department to reopen the case two years ago.

Director Keith Beauchamp spent years investigating Till’s murder, for which no one was ever convicted. The two men who killed him, because Till allegedly whistled at a white woman while in a store, were acquitted by an all-white Mississippi jury in 1955. The pair brazenly confessed to the murder later in Look magazine.

Working tirelessly, interviewing scores of witnesses, Beauchamp found that a dozen more people were implicated in the murder, several of whom are still living.

Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003, provides much of Beauchamp’s narrative, straightforwardly recounting the story. But even though she doesn’t get emotional, her pain is evident as she recounts her visit to the funeral home where she had to fight to see her son’s mutilated body and her determination to have an open casket so others could see what was done to her son.

Till’s cousins and friends recount their experiences around the event and others, most notably the Rev. Al Sharpton, put the Till case in its proper context. Leaving the casket open so that people could see Till, his head split in two by the brutal killers, did what a thousand speeches could not, Sharpton argues.

Till’s body wasn’t viewed only by the people who came to the Chicago church. A photo in Jet magazine was seen by thousands more, galvanizing a burgeoning movement and inspiring people such as Rosa Parks.

Beauchamp isn’t a great filmmaker. “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till” is basically a compilation of talking-to-the-camera interviews mixed with vintage black-and-white film clips.

But with its sober tone and deliberate chronology from Emmett’s ill-fated trip to the store through the viewing of the body, the first trial and Beauchamp’s subsequent investigation, it tells a story that should never be forgotten.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.