Keith Beauchamp

Award-winning filmmaker Keith A. Beauchamp attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he studied criminal justice to become a civil rights attorney. As a young boy in Baton Rouge, Beauchamp had his share of run-ins with racism, but it wasn’t until an incident where he was assaulted by an undercover police officer after dancing with a white classmate at a party that he felt compelled to fight racism.

In the fall of 1997, Beauchamp relocated from Baton Rouge to New York, where he quickly found work at Big Baby Films, a company founded by childhood friends focused on music video and film production. It was here that he would find himself on another path to becoming a filmmaker. And through this feat, attempt to remedy some of the past and present injustices that plague communities in the United States and abroad. Beauchamp honed his behind-the camera skills during the day and spent his evenings researching and locating anyone who might have information on the Emmett Till case, a story told to Beauchamp when he was ten. At this young age, Beauchamp saw a Jet magazine containing a picture of Emmett Till’s dead body and was told the story behind the horrific lynching.

In 1999, Beauchamp founded Till Freedom Come Productions, a company devoted to socially significant projects that can both teach and entertain. He has devoted the past thirty years of his life to telling the story of Emmett Till and has traveled extensively between New York, Chicago, and Mississippi to investigate the historic murder. During this journey, Beauchamp befriended the late Mrs. Mamie Till Mobley, who would take him under her wing and inspire him to join her ongoing efforts to seek justice in her son’s case. As a result of their close relationship, Beauchamp would produce and direct the award-winning documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till while persistently lobbying both the State of Mississippi and the Federal Government to reopen the Emmett Till Murder case.

On May 10, 2004, the United States Department of Justice reopened the nearly 50-year-old case, citing Beauchamp’s documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till—released in 2005—as both a major factor in their decision and the starting point for their investigation. In 2005, Emmett Till’s body was exhumed, and in 2006, the FBI handed over evidence to the Leflore County District Attorney in Mississippi. Sadly, in 2007, a Mississippi Grand Jury decided not to indict the remaining suspects in the case. That same year, Beauchamp began collaborating with the FBI’s Till-inspired Civil Rights "Cold Case" Initiative, producing documentaries on other unsolved civil rights murders to assist federal agents in bringing remaining perpetrators to justice.

After almost two decades of friendship, producers Barbara Broccoli, Fred Zollo, EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg, Thomas Levine, Michael Reilly, and Beauchamp joined forces to produce the highly anticipated film Till, directed by award-winning director Chinonye Chukwu. Beauchamp, renowned for his profound storytelling and tireless advocacy for civil rights, earned prestigious honors such as the Producers Guild of America’s Stanley Kramer Award in 2023, Best Screenplay at the Black Reel Awards in 2023, and the National Board of Review’s Top 10 Film Award in 2022 for the acclaimed film Till.

Beauchamp has been featured on 60 Minutes, ABC World News Tonight's Person of the Week, MSNBC, Good Morning America, CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera, as well as in hundreds of publications worldwide, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Associated Press, Chicago Sun-Times, and Time Magazine.

Beauchamp’s past works include TV One’s Murder in Black and White hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton, Wanted Justice: Johnnie Mae Chappell for the History Channel, BET’s Exceptional Black Women, and Investigation Discovery’s award-winning crime reality series The Injustice Files, produced by CBS News, where he served as an Executive Producer and Host.

Beauchamp is also a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities across the country.