Till’s death, and more specifically the Jet magazine photos of Till’s funeral, is what’s credited with bringing life to the civil rights movement. Yamiche Alcindor is a journalist from Haitian descent. She and her mother hold two doctoral degrees. But Till’s death and the photos of Till’s funeral that appeared in Jet magazine are credited with giving life to the civil rights movement. Alcindor responded to a question on racial progress over the past 50 years by saying, “When you realize you can come here, you can have a child in AP U.S. History, and not know Emmett Till’s name, it tells where you are as a society.” On April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Hope & Fury: MLK and the Movement and the Media is a documentary that examines the role of the media in King’s social movements. It was released as the nation recalls King’s assassination fifty years ago Wednesday. Andrew Lack, chairman of NBC News, and a Mississippi Today cofounder, was the executive producer. He also provided an editor’s cutting of the film for a Mississippi Today screening at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on Tuesday night. Alcindor was joined by Tom Brokaw (a veteran broadcaster who covered civil rights movements during the 1960s) and Jackson Mayor Chokwe. A panel discussion followed the screening. The film opens with footage from a dashboard camera that captures the 2016 shooting of Philando castile in St. Paul, Minn. by a police officer. It then jumps to footage from the dashboard camera of Castile’s 2016 shooting near St. Paul, Minn., which was captured by Diamond Reynolds on Facebook live. Hope & Fury interviewer Nikole Hannah Jones, a New York Times Magazine journalist, and Joy Reid, MSNBC, compared the live-streaming Castile’s death to the decision Till’s mom made to live stream her son’s death by having an open-casket burial and allowing a magazine publication of photos of Castile’s horribly mangled face. This is something the country will have to face. This is not something I will do by myself. Reid spoke out about Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision. “If this is what your going to do to African boys, then you’re going have to deal with it.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. displayed his knowledge of mass media’s power and television news specifically by instructing protesters in Sunday clothes and holding demonstrations in the early hours of the morning so that footage could be transported to New York in sufficient time to air on nightly news networks. America saw the fall of the civil rights movement, as well as the rise of the more radical Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Stokely Carmichael (who popularized “Black Power”), via television. By covering events such the King- and Carmichael led March Against Fear from Memphis and Jackson, “Bloody Sunday” in Selma (Ala.), riots that followed King’s assassination and the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers, and the protests in Ferguson Mo. after a white officer shot and killed 18-year old Michael Brown, the media played a crucial role in the spread and expansion of civil rights movements. Alcindor suggested that Ferguson protests, which she reported for USA Today, wouldn’t have been a major story if a gas station hadn’t been set on fire. She said that crisis moments are what attract the media. Because the mainstream media focuses too heavily on property damage, and ignores the story about police brutality in St. Louis suburbs, Ferguson activists made extensive use of social media. Lumumba said that he participated in protests in Ferguson and was a civil rights lawyer before becoming Jackson’s mayor. Brokaw stated that the Hope & Fury screening Tuesday featured a diverse audience, which he said was a testament to progress in race relations. However, he believed America would have made more progress by now. When I look back at what it was like in the South and across the country between 1965 and now, I can see that we have not made the progress that I had hoped for. He said that he was perhaps a Kumbaya white boy, who believed we had reached the Promised Land. “I believed we’d be so much further at this point for all of the grief, violence, and the sacrifices that were made,” he said. Several members of the audience expressed mixed emotions. They were moved by the people who came together to watch the film, but were still disturbed by some images. When asked what he took away from the film, Ibrahim Hudson, 12, said that “Black people were misunderstood” and was punished for it. They were not embraced because they stood up for white people. … It makes it mad and proud at once.” Sybil Child stated, “It was absolutely marvelous to see all these people together.” However, she said, “I tell ya, the film almost made me sick.” It felt like I had to apologize to all the black people in the audience. It was very moving.” Contributing: Aallyah and Kelsey Davis