ROSALIND Patton was living in rural Louisiana when 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Mississippi. She was 10 years old.

"We heard a little Negro boy had been killed for whistling at a white woman. We were warned, 'See what happens if you say something to white folks. Don't do it. They'll kill you.' I remember feeling afraid, thinking we had to be so careful. I didn't know much more than that," she said.

Some weeks ago, the special education teacher and Oakland resident was listening to the radio and heard about a screening of the documentary, "The Untold Story of Emmett Till." (The 2005 documentary, directed by Keith Beauchamp, led to a new investigation of the case by the U.S. Justice Department.)

"I flashed back to when I was a girl, and I thought, yes, I'd like to know what really happened. I don't really know," Patton said.

She corralled her teenage son and two younger African-American males to go with her. The young men were joking, complaining that they would have to watch a boring, dry documentary. Until the film started.

"They were totally captivated, stunned. There was no more joking. They were practically sitting there with their mouths open," she said. "And afterwards, normally you can't get my son to discuss anything, afterwards they were all open to discuss what they saw."

Unfortunately she and her party were among fewer than 20 people in the movie theater. She talked to the manager, who said the filmmakers couldn't afford to advertise, so only a few people had come to see it. He even asked her how she'd heard about it.

She returned a few days later and the theater was almost empty again.

"I thought, people have to see this. Black History month is coming up. The murder of Emmett Till was a catalyst to the civil rights movement. More people need to see this."

And she couldn't get the documentary out of her head. She described it as weighing heavily on her heart.

"His mother (Mamie Till-Mobely) was so brave. She demanded the funeral director have the casket open: 'I want the world to see what they did to my son.' You can't imagine how anyone could be that evil. They mutilated him so bad," Patton said, sighing.

Hundreds of people went to the funeral in Chicago. The picture of Till in his casket that ran in "Jet Magazine" haunted anyone who saw it — it didn't even look like a human being. That picture motivated Beauchamp to look into the case. If his murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury — they later admitted to the crime in Look Magazine — they were ultimately thwarted. Till's gruesome murder sparked the civil rights movement that would outlaw segregation and undermine white supremacy.

"I discovered Rosa Parks was motivated by the death of Till. I didn't know that," Patton said. "She was so angry about it, along with everyone in the south, it was one of the things that encouraged her to take her stand on the bus."

Patton had her own experience with segregation and buses. At 7, she got on a bus with her grandmother and sat behind the bus driver. When her grandmother turned to see she was sitting in the front, she screamed at her to come to the back of the bus. "You don't do that," her grandmother told the crying girl. Patton remembers looking at the bus driver to see if he was angry.

"There was a pleasant look on his face," she recalled. "Everyone else on the bus was black. They were kind of looking sheepish."

In another memory, when the bus for Negro children passed the white school on the way to the Negro school, the white children would shout, "Nigger, nigger, nigger."

"Every morning the bus driver warned us, don't look in that direction. Don't say anything. Look straight ahead. Everyday," Patton said. "If we didn't think he was looking we might cut our eyes over there. I didn't like the idea I couldn't respond. I wanted to yell something back."

The Till documentary stuck with her, as well as the sparse attendance. She decided to call the owner of the Grand Lake Theater. He said he couldn't take on the financial liability, but she could rent the theater. He warned her if the audience didn't come she could lose her money.

"I thought about it. It's a lot of money to me. But I decided I was going to do it. I have to do it. I have no other choice," she said. She rented the Grand Lake for Tuesday, Feb. 28, the last day of Black History Month. There will be five screenings of the film, at 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m., 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. The admission fee is $5 for adults, $3 for students.

She said she sent letters to every school in Oakland and the surrounding area. Every public school, every private school. She made up fliers and tried to get radio announcements. She said she's gotten little response from the Oakland schools.

"I don't know if it's going to be a good turnout. But I'm doing what I have to do. I'm possessed by this.," she said. "It (Till's murder) was a catalyst to the civil rights movement. It wasn't just about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. It's part of American history."

Brenda Payton writes for ANG newspapers.