Joe Biden praises “Tot” at White House screening today; “With truth comes healing and justice,” says POTUS at Black History Month event

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may have been terribly frowned upon To this year when Oscar nominations were up for grabs, but today the President of the United States had nothing but praise for the film directed by Chinonye Chukwu about the 1955 lynching of civil rights activist Emmett by racists and his mother’s relentless struggle for justice.

“To everyone involved in this film, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, people will never forget how you make them feel,” Joe Biden said before the film To Exhibition at the White House. “People will never forget how you make them feel,” the president added. “You know, you have this artist’s gift of making us feel our common humanity.”

Based on the horrific events of Emmett Till’s death in Mississippi nearly 70 years ago, and Mamie Till-Mobley’s determination to literally open her son’s casket at his funeral in Chicago and literally shine the spotlight on the entire world that he suffered in his fatal pursuit of equality, Until it appeared in theaters last October. From Orion Pictures, MGM Pictures and United Artists Releasing, the film stars Danielle Deadwyler as Till-Mobley and Jalyn Hall as Emmett. Director Chukwu co-wrote the powerful screenplay with Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp.

Chukwu, Deadwyle, Hall, Reilly and Beauchamp attended Black History Month today to celebrate the show in the East Room. Also there with “Emmett Till’s family, students, civil rights activists, historians and families of victims of hate violence,” as the White House said earlier this week, was Whoopi Goldberg, who played Alma Carthan, Mamie’s mother, and Emmett’s played grandma on the film. and is a producer, along with co-till producers Thomas Levine, Fred Zollo and Barbara Broccoli, directing the James Bond franchise.

“Only with truth comes healing and justice and restoration and another step forward in that — for that promise we all made but never achieved: a more perfect union,” POTUS told the invited audience before the screening . “But we never gave up completely,” he continued. “Therefore we cannot simply choose to learn what we want to know, we must learn what we ought to know. We should know everything about our history. And great nations do. great nations. And we are a great nation.”

“And that’s why the story is so important,” Biden added in his sometimes off-script remarks. “You know, that’s why this movie is so important.”

Nearly 120 years after such legislation was first introduced in Congress, Biden signed legislation named after Emmett Till last year that officially and finally makes lynching a federal hate crime. As members of the Till family seek justice against the now 90-year-old white woman Carolyn Bryant Donham, who allegedly complained in August 1955 that Emmett’s visit made her advances, the law signed by Biden allows the late Roy Bryant nothing right and JW Milam . , who was charged with Till’s murder and quickly acquitted by an all-white jury. Not long after, the Mississippi men, one of whom was then married to Emmett’s accuser, admitted to killing the 14-year-old in a paid magazine interview.

Late last year, Till and Till-Mobley were posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor the organization can bestow.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre first announced during her briefing on February 14 that the “incredibly powerful film” would be shown today. “We haven’t actually shown a lot of films, so I think the fact that we’re doing it this month sends a strong message from the president and from this White House, from the First Lady, about how important this is to us. make this film and make it happen.” that her story will be told and not forgotten,” she told the assembled White House press.

Today, President Biden reiterated that statement in his own way: “And now, from the White House, during Black History Month, it’s my honor — and it’s a real honor — maybe the greatest honor I’ve had since I’ve been president .” become – it is my honor to present the film To. God loves him