History of Mamie Till

Mamie Elizabeth Carthan was born on November 23, 1921, in Webb, Mississippi.

In 1922, Mamie's father, Nash Carthan moved to Argo, Illinois, near Chicago, shortly after Mamie's birth.

Alma Carthan joined Louis in January 1924, bringing along two-year-old Mamie and her brother, John. They settled in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Argo.

At age 18, Mamie met a young man from New Madrid, Missouri named Louis Till. Mamie married Louis Till on October 14, 1940. Both were 18 years old.

Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store.

In 1945, Ms. Till received notice from the War Department that, while serving in Italy, her husband (along with accomplice Fred A. McMurray) had been charged with raping an Italian woman. Both men were tried and convicted by a U.S. Army general court-martial and their sentence was death by hanging.

By the early 1950s, Mamie and Emmett had moved to Chicago's South Side. Mamie met and married "Pink" Bradley, but they divorced two years later.

In 1955, when Emmett was 14, his mother put him on the train to spend the summer visiting his cousins in Money, Mississippi.

Mamie's son was abducted and brutally murdered on August 28, 1955, after being accused of interacting inappropriately with a white woman. 

Mamie married Gene Mobley on June 24, 1957. She became a teacher, changed her surname to Till-Mobley, and continued her life as an activist working to educate people about what happened to her son.

Till graduated from Chicago Teachers College in 1960 (now Chicago State University, 1971).

In 1976, Mamie obtained a master's degree in educational administration from Loyola University Chicago.

Mamie and Gene Mobley remained happily married until Gene's death from a stroke on March 18, 2000.

On January 6, 2003, Till-Mobley died of heart failure at the age of 81. Till-Mobley was buried near her son in Burr Oak Cemetery, where her monument reads, "Her pain united a nation."

Till is an American biographical drama film directed by Chinonye Chukwu, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp. It stars Danielle Deadwyler, Whoopi Goldberg, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Jayme Lawson, Tosin Cole, Kevin Carroll, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Douglas Thompson, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Haley Bennett. Production companies are Orion Pictures, Eon Productions, Frederick Zollo Productions, and Whoop, Inc.