Will Smith & Jay-Z’s Series On Emmett Till Is Coming

The Emmett Till series that is being made by Jay-Z and Will Smith has finally found a home.

The highly-anticipated project is officially set to air on ABC, according to reports from Deadline, focusing on the story of Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley, who fought for civil rights for the rest of her life after the murder of her son.

Till was murdered at the age of 14 after he allegedly spoke to a white cashier in Money, Mississippi. The woman working the cash register admitted to fabricating the idea that Till was inappropriate toward her, but not until after her story led to the child being abducted from his family’s home, brutally beaten, shot in the head and then tossed into a nearby river.

Till-Mobley famously asked that her son’s casket be left open during his funeral in Chicago and the photos of the aftermath of his lynching spread throughout the nation. The story of the teenager who was killed by a mob in Mississippi was a flashpoint for the Civil Rights movement. Will Smith and Jay-Z will tell his mother’s story as a part of the planned series called Women of the Movement. The anthology will focus on different important women in the Civil Rights Movement and tell their stories over the course of a single season.

Both Smith and Jay-Z have their respective production companies and have worked together in the past, most notably on the 2014 remake of Annie.

Their upcoming series on Emmett Till was initially pitched to HBO 5 years ago. It was still going to focus on Emmett Till, but was framed as a one-off miniseries telling that singular story. When the series moved on and left HBO, it was rewritten as part of a larger anthology focusing on the women who fought for equality in the ’50s, ’60s, and onward.

As of now, there’s no word yet on when the Women of the Movement series will air.