Will Smith, Jay Z Producing Emmett Till HBO Series

Jay Z and Will Smith are teaming up to executive produce an upcoming six hour HBO miniseries about Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old, was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955 as retaliation for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

Till, a 14-year-old Chicagoan visiting family in Money, Miss., spoke with Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the town grocer. A few nights later, on Aug. 28, he was taken to a barn by Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, who brutally murdered him. They beat him so severly that his mother Mamie Tiller Bradley, insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world would see what had been done to her son.

Following their September 1955 acquittal, Bryant and Milam admitted to murdering Till in a magazine interview, fully aware of their rights shielding them from re-prosecution.

Till would have turned 74 Saturday

.

This isn't the first time Smith and Jay Z worked together they also produce last year's Annie remake, the Broadway production of “Fela!” and the rapper’s “Live in Brooklyn” concert alongside his wife, Beyoncé.