Keith Beauchamp
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Keith Beauchamp (b. 1972?) is a filmmaker who investigated the murder of Emmett Till, fifty years after Till's death in 1955. Beauchamp's research eventually led him to create the documentary film The Untold Story of Emmett Till [1], and the reopening of the case by the United States Department of Justice in May 2004.
Beauchamp first encountered the Emmett Till story at age ten while looking through an issue of Jet magazine. In 1996 he started his own research, and found microfilm of articles which listed witness who had not been questioned by police, and references to uncharged participants in the murder. Through the help of other researchers, Beauchamp contacted living witnesses, but he says that it was some years before they trusted him enough to speak on camera. Researching and creating the film took nine years.
Beauchamp alleges the he nearly suffered a similar fate to Till in 1989. As a young man at a dance in a Louisiana nightclub, he claims that a bouncer accosted him for dancing with a white girl. Beauchamp states that an undercover police officer then dragged him outside where he was beaten, before being taken to a police station where he was handcuffed to a chair and beaten further. According to Beauchamp, the abuse only stopped when the police realized that Beauchamp was close friends with the son of a sheriff's department major.
Beauchamp is involved in other film work but credits the Untold Story with occupying and shaping his life in a major way, and his relationship with Mamie Till, Emmett mother's, with inspiring him to create the film. When promoting the film, Beauchamp has repeatedly alleged that fourteen or more people took part in the abduction and murder and that five are still alive. In 2004, his claims were reported favorably in a segment for "60 Minutes."
In February, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported that both the FBI and a Leflore County Grand Jury, which was empaneled by Joyce Chiles, a black prosecutor, had found no credible basis for Keith Beauchamp's claim that fourteen individuals took part in Till's abduction and murder or that any are still alive. The Grand Jury also decided not to pursue charges against Carolyn Bryant Donham, Roy Bryant's ex wife. Neither the FBI nor the Grand Jury found any credible evidence that Henry Lee Loggins, currently living in an Ohio nursing home, and identifed by Beauchamp as a suspect who could be charged, had any role in the crime. Beauchamp still refuses to name the fourteen people who he says were involved although the FBI and District Attorney have now completed their investigations of his charges and he is free to go on the record. A story by Jerry Mitchell in the Clarion-Ledger on February 18 describes Beauchamp's allegation that fourteen or more were involved as a "legend."
The same article also labels as "legend" a recent rumor that Till had endured castration at the hands of his victimizers. The castration theory was first put forward uncritically in Beauchamp's "Untold Story" although Mamie Till-Mobley (Emmett's mother) had said in an earlier documentary directed by Stanley Nelson, "The Murder of Emmett Till," (2003) that her son's genitals were intact when she examined the corpse. The recent autopsy, as reported by Mitchell, confirmed Mobley-Till's original account and showed no evidence of castration.
[edit] External links
- Fact, Fiction of Till's Murder, February 18, 2007, Jackson Clarion-Ledger
- Grand Jury Issues No Indictment in Till Slaying, , February 27, 2007, Jackson Clarion-Ledger
- article by Keith Beauchamp
- interview with Beauchamp by Association of Independent Film Makers, reprinted by New England Film
- review by Roger Ebert, April 22, 2005
- review by Washington City Paper, reprinted by altweeklies.com
