How Emmett Till's murder inspired Rod Serling to create the original 'Twilight Zone' series
Frustrated by censors, Serling went a different route, with great success.
Rod Serling found himself frustrated by censors when he tried to tackle racism.
The original "Twilight Zone" series was unlike anything anyone had ever seen on television. Airing from 1959 to 1964, the sci-fi/horror show frequently referenced in popular culture and cited as one of the best TV shows of all time was the brainchild of Rod Serling.
Serling's inspiration for the show wasn't rooted in science fiction or cinematic horror, but rather in the dark reality of American racism
In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago, was brutally murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Till had been accused of flirting with a white woman in a store, and the woman's husband and his half-brother kidnapped, mutilated and lynched Till for his "crime." The two men were arrested and a trial was held, but the all-white, all-male jury acquitted the two men of all charges after less than an hour's deliberations.
Till's mother courageously fought for Emmett's story to be told, and she insisted his funeral be open-casket so the world could see what those men had done to her son. Photographs from the funeral made national news and galvanized people across the country, fanning the early sparks of the Civil Rights Movement.
Serling, who was 30 years old at the time, watched Till's story play out in the news. A rising star in the television world, Serling set out to write a teleplay that addressed the racism at the heart of Till's murder. In an interview with Mike Wallace, Serling explained how he'd written a show sponsored by U.S. Steel, and by the time the censors were finished with it, the script was a "lukewarm, vitiated, emasculated" version of what he'd originally created. Every reference to Black or white, the South and anything that even slightly alluded to the South was changed or removed. (Serling describes the censors removing Coca-Cola bottles from a scene because they might have too much of a Southern connotation.)
"It bore no relationship at all to what we had purported to say initially," he told Wallace.
Serling fought back, but ultimately the money holds the power. He felt forced to accept it, though he voiced his feelings about censorship of challenging themes.
"I think it's criminal that we're not permitted to make dramatic note of social evils as they exist, of controversial themes as they are inherent in our society," he told Wallace. "I think it's ridiculous that drama, which by its very nature should make a comment on those things that affect our daily lives, and is in the position, at least in terms of television drama, to take a stand."
As explained in Smithsonian magazine, station owners and advertising agencies catered to white audiences and were fearful of losing money if something offended them. Serling would later say, "From experience, I can tell you that drama, at least in television, must walk tiptoe and in agony lest it offend some cereal buyer from a given state below the Mason-Dixon.”
Serling tried again to frame a show episode around Emmett Till's story, but set it as a lynching in the Southwest. That script also got changed, set back 100 years and erasing all mention of Till and race. But Serling did manage to get a message about "the ugly picture of prejudice and violence" conveyed in the show's closing monologue.
Ultimately, Serling realized that tackling issues like racism and prejudice head-on was not going to work within the power structure of television, so he had to get creative. A show like "The Twilight Zone" would allow for social issues to be addressed through metaphor and allegory. Serling expressed the hopeful belief that people can have their eyes opened to their own inner biases through indirect stories that tap into such themes.
In an interview for the Library of Congress, Serling explained:
"You may have to tell them a story of prejudice in parable form, in which they may step aside as third persons and cluck and say, 'Tsk tsk tsk, how awful we treat our minority groups,' but at least they know that it's an evil, and they will recognize it as such, and by osmosis or some incredible process, will somewhere along the line be faced with a situation in which they too may have to exorcise their prejudice and be conscious of it as an evil. Now on "Twilight Zone," for example, done during just as timorous a time as any other time, we made a comment on prejudice, on conformity, on intolerance, on censorship. But it's easy to do it when you're talking about 'Buck Rogers isn't allowed to write his memoirs in the way he wants to write them, so he puts on his backpack, his rocket-pack, and he zooms over to the publisher.' And they applaud and laugh and think, 'How exciting and interesting.' Now, it may well be that the inner message may never get through, but I think peripherally it does get through."
Though he was never able to bring Emmett Till's story to the screen in the way he wanted to, Serling did manage to push storytelling in a way that—hopefully—helped peel away layers of prejudice that veil people from the truth about themselves.
As he said, "The writer’s role is to menace the public’s conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.”
Serling did menace people's consciences and focus on the issues of his time. He just did it through strange science fiction tales—and he did it well.
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Resurfaced video of French skier's groin incident has people giving the announcer a gold medal
"The boys took a beating on that one."
Downhill skiing is a sport rife with injuries, but not usually this kind.
A good commentator can make all the difference when watching sports, even when an event goes smoothly. But it's when something goes wrong that great announcers rise to the top. There's no better example of a great announcer in a surprise moment than when French skier Yannick Bertrand took a gate to the groin in a 2007 super-G race.
Competitive skiers fly down runs at incredible speeds, often exceeding 60 mph. Hitting something hard at that speed would definitely hurt, but hitting something hard with a particularly sensitive part of your body would be excruciating. So when Bertrand slammed right into a gate family-jewels-first, his high-pitched scream was unsurprising. What was surprising was the perfect commentary that immediately followed.
This is a clip you really just have to see and hear to fully appreciate:
- YouTube youtu.be
It's unclear who the announcer is, even after multiple Google inquiries, which is unfortunate because that gentleman deserves a medal. The commentary gets better with each repeated viewing, with highlights like:
"The gate the groin for Yannick Bertrand, and you could hear it. And if you're a man, you could feel it."
"Oh, the Frenchman. Oh-ho, monsieurrrrrr."
"The boys took a beating on that one."
"That guy needs a hug."
"Those are the moments that change your life if you're a man, I tell you what."
"When you crash through a gate, when you do it at high rate of speed, it's gonna hurt and it's going to leave a mark in most cases. And in this particular case, not the area where you want to leave a mark."
Imagine watching a man take a hit to the privates at 60 mph and having to make impromptu commentary straddling the line between professionalism and acknowledging the universal reality of what just happened. There are certain things you can't say on network television that you might feel compelled to say. There's a visceral element to this scenario that could easily be taken too far in the commentary, and the inherent humor element could be seen as insensitive and offensive if not handled just right.
The announcer nailed it. 10/10. No notes.
The clip frequently resurfaces during the Winter Olympic Games, though the incident didn't happen during an Olympic event. Yannick Bertrand was competing at the FIS World Cup super-G race in Kvitfjell, Norway in 2007, when the unfortunate accident occurred. Bertrand had competed at the Turin Olympics the year before, however, coming in 24th in the downhill and super-G events.
As painful as the gate to the groin clearly as, Bertrand did not appear to suffer any damage that kept him from the sport. In fact, he continued competing in international downhill and super-G races until 2014.
According to a 2018 study, Alpine skiing is a notoriously dangerous sport with a reported injury rate of 36.7 per 100 World Cup athletes per season. Of course, it's the knees and not the coin purse that are the most common casualty of ski racing, which we saw clearly in U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn's harrowing experiences at the 2026 Olympics. Vonn was competing with a torn ACL and ended up being helicoptered off of the mountain after an ugly crash that did additional damage to her legs, requiring multiple surgeries (though what caused the crash was reportedly unrelated to her ACL tear). Still, she says she has no regrets.
As Bertrand's return to the slopes shows, the risk of injury doesn't stop those who live for the thrill of victory, even when the agony of defeat hits them right in the rocks.