ABC’s civil rights series Women Of The Movement debuted on 6 January 2022. The show covers the story of Mamie Till Mobley, a mother who devoted her life to seeking justice for her son after Emmett Till’s brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955.
Here we meet Emmett Till’s great-uncle, Moses Wright, who played a huge part in the case. What happened to him and his descendants in the aftermath?
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Women of the Movement | Trailer
Who was Moses Wright in Women Of The Movement?
Women Of The Movement introduces Moses Wright as Emmett Till’s great-uncle, portrayed in the series by American actor Glynn Turman.
Wright was a sharecropper and circuit preacher who became a nightclub custodian in the mid-1950s after his family moved to the Chicago suburbs.
Cheat Sheet reports that viewers may recognise Turman from How To Get Away With Murder, his role in Super 8 as Dr Woodward, and his features in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and John Dies At The End.
Emmett Till, played by 16-year-old Cedric Joe, leaves his home town of Chicago in 1955 to visit Money, Mississippi, and stay with his great-uncle.
The 14-year-old is warned about the culture in the Jim Crow South before being dared to enter a grocery store where he is accused of whistling at a white woman.
As reported by CNN, this mistaken situation sparks a flurry of racist hysteria, leading to Till’s abduction and brutal murder.
Also reportedly known as Mose and Preacher, Moses Wright was born on 8 April 1892 in Mississippi and died aged 85 in August 1977 at La Grange, Cook County, Illinois.
What was his role in Emmett Till’s case?
Wright’s household, including two of Emmett Till’s cousins, witnessed Till’s kidnapping on the night of 28 August 1955.
64-year-old Moses Wright played a huge part in bringing the murderers of his great-nephew to account.
When the trial began, Moses was encouraged by many not to testify but he defied all odds to do so.
PBS states that Moses Wright’s testimony in the trial of Emmett Till’s accused killers would go down in history as one of the bravest moments of the civil rights movement.
More about great-uncle Moses and his descendants
Moses Wright was the son of William Wright and husband of Elizabeth W Wright as well as Lucinda or Linda Wright, as listed on his Geni profile
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It was Simeon Wright, Moses Wright’s son, who identified his cousin’s ring for the police after Emmett Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River.
Five decades later, Simeon Wright also donated a sample of his DNA to help federal prosecutors prove the disfigured body was Emmett’s, as per The New York Times.
The son of Moses Wright, who was 12 at the time of Till’s murder, died in 2017 in a Chicago suburb at the age of 74 caused by complications arising from bone cancer.
