How Hollywood turned a 'blind eye' to Emmett Till: Inside a troubled 67-year history

Mention "The Twilight Zone," and the image of host and creator Rod Serling almost automatically comes to mind. The hit anthology series, which ran from 1959 to 1964, firmly established Serling as a visionary who wove social commentary and an astute understanding of human foibles into his tales of fantasy, science fiction and horror.

Before his breakthrough, Serling had tried, and failed, to tackle the issues of the day even more directly: While working on another anthology series, ABC's "The U.S. Steel Hour," he wrote "Noon on Doomsday," based on the brutal 1955 killing of Emmett Till in the Jim Crow South.

After turning in his initial script, however, Serling was told to change the race of the Black and white characters to suggest "an unnamed foreigner," and to shift the setting from the South to New England.

Serling protested as demands from censors, executives