Original subtitles

[narrator] A fortified facility

that sustained America's heroes,

[Karen Johnson] The product that came out of these buildings

was used for so many celebrations and victories.

[narrator] And a small town

where a murder sparked a revolution.

[Gloria Dickenson] What started here was one of the most

horrible things that happened in the nation,

but it also brought about much needed change.

In Washington State,

one building has left its mark on American culture,

and fueled one of the nation's greatest treasure hunts.

[Paul Knight] This place has a storied history

unlike any other place that I know of.

I can almost hear the voices

of the people who are working in these areas.

[Greg Szulgit] We're in Tumwater,

about an hour's drive south of Seattle.

It's a beautiful town that's built on the Deschutes River.

[narrator] On the river's open plains,

a tower looms over an abandoned industrial complex.

[Greg] This giant, tall tower is the weird part

where you have a lot of space to build out,

to fit lots of workers and lots of machines.

Why you'd build up,

that begs some questions.

[Jim Meigs] It's got these architectural hints

that seem like they aim at something grander

than just a factory.

[narrator] Inside, there are more questions than answers.

[Hadley Meares] There's white tiles on the tower wall,

so maybe this was a place that was meant to get dirty.

It looks like something you'd expect in a hospital or laboratory.

This place was the heartbeat of the community.

It produced a product that was iconic.

[narrator] These buildings brought joy

to millions of Americans.

But when the nation faced dark days,

its innovation helped keep the war machine rolling.

[Jim] In World War II,

this was considered important to the morale of the country.

[narrator] For 36 years,

Paul Knight's job gave him a special connection to this place.

[Paul] This building is pretty much like an old friend of mine.

First entered it in 1964.

[narrator] Paul is one of a few who knows its secrets,

including why this tower had to be built so tall.

It was very unique in America for its time.

This building utilized gravity

to move the materials from place to place.

[Greg] Ingredients would be taken up by elevator,

and then by gravity would simply process down through various vats

and would be treated in different ways,

and at the bottom, bingo, beer.

[narrator] This is the Olympia Brewery.

At its peak, it produced 100,000 barrels of beer a year.

As the brewmaster,

Paul developed a taste for the product.

[Paul] I've drunk a lot of Olympia beer in my life,

maybe more Olympia Beer than anybody else.

I've probably drank about 90,000 bottles of beer.

[Jim] When I reached the legal drinking age,

Olympia Beer was known as a really affordable light lager.

My friends and I always had a case of Olympia.

[Greg] The beer was named after Washington state capital, Olympia,

which is only a few miles from Tumwater.

[narrator] But this beer was popular beyond

Washington State's dimly lit bars.

Karen Johnson has seen it on America's silver screen.

Clint Eastwood was really in favor of Olympia Beer.

So whenever Clint Eastwood was in a Hollywood movie,

and had a chance to drink a beer,

he always made sure it was Olympia Beer.

[narrator] Despite making it to Hollywood,

the beer's origins come from a time when the West was still wild.

It was the brainchild, of a German immigrant.

[Paul] Leopold Schmidt is very much a hero of mine.

He was the founder of the Olympia Brewing Company.

The reason Leopold Schmidt wanted to build a brewery here

was because of the water.

[Hadley] So legend has it

that Leopold was looking for a place to set up a brewery,

and he told his barber,

and his barber said, "Hey, you should go use the waters of Tumwater"

because the indigenous people here have used it for brewing forever.

[narrator] Leopold made a discovery that changed the course of beer history.

[Paul] The springs that Leopold found

were some of the purest brewing water to be discovered anywhere.

[Greg] Having been filtered by the rocks,

the water here has a very low mineral content,

perfect for brewing lager.

In 1896,

he built this beautiful building,

Leopold really wanted to push the importance of the water,

so he came up with the slogan, "It's the water."

[TV announcer] Didn't we remind you on every bottle

and every can?

It's the water that gives light Olympia Beer

its exceptional quality and unchanging good taste.

[narrator] Although the purity of the water

created local demand for the beer,

with limited advertising,

Leopold struggled to sell it outside of the state,

until one of America's greatest treasure hunts

gave him a unique opportunity.

In 1896, there was a discovery

that sent shockwaves around the world.

They'd found gold in the Klondike.

This meant a massive flood of prospectors to Alaska.

Of course, what do all those thirsty miners and workers need?

Lots of beer.

[Karen] But at that time, Alaska was officially dry,

meaning people couldn't sell beer there.

[narrator] Alaskan prohibition was deterring minors from moving there.

So to attract a willing workforce to this desolate frontier,

the federal government stepped in.

In 1899 the US Congress changed that rule,

and Alaska suddenly became wet.

[narrator] But with Alaska having been dry,

it didn't have any in state breweries.

[Karen] So Leopold saw that opportunity,

and started shipping his beer to Alaska in 1899.

Olympia Beer became the dominant beer brand

in what would become these boom towns of Alaska.

[narrator] In just three years,

100,000 men traveled to the last frontier,

many toasting their new fortunes with Olympia Beer.

It transformed this brewery into an industrial juggernaut.

But when the company seemed to be at its peak,

something unexpected shook its foundation.

[Paul] In 1914, Leopold Schmidt unfortunately passed away

at a very young age of 68.

He died of a heart attack, very tragic.

[narrator] Yet the death of its champion was just the beginning

of a time of change for the brewery.

Its future would be sticky,

but sweet.

[narrator] In 1914,

the Olympia Brewery was reeling from the death of its founder,

but things were about to be turned upside down.

[Karen] In 1914, Washington State voted to go dry,

and voted in Prohibition,

which was going to ban the making and selling of beer.

[narrator] Just five years later,

the entire United States followed suit,

and the era of national Prohibition began.

Yet thanks to a bizarre twist,

this brewery managed to survive.

[Jim] The company pivoted.

They had this hygienic workspace.

They had all this equipment.

So they went into business processing

various kinds of products.

[Karen] Here at this plant,

they imported railroad cars full of apples and made fruit juice.

[narrator] For over 15 years,

the smells of hops were replaced with crushed apples,

but when Prohibition came to an end,

ironically, this brewery stayed dry.

[Jim] The beer business was getting more mechanized.

Factories were now electrified,

so the company built a whole new facility

a few hundred yards away.

[narrator] At the same time,

a technological revolution was reforming the beer industry.

The beer can is invented in Virginia in 1935.

[narrator] Olympia Beer took a stance against this innovation.

[Jim] Some people complain that the beer from a can

had a bit of a metallic taste.

For Olympia Beer,

they were very devoted to the purity of their water.

So the idea of a metallic aftertaste was not going to work for them.

[Hadley] So instead, they developed a glass bottle

with a metal cap that they called the "stubby."

[Karen] The stubby was a shorter, stockier bottle

that traveled well, fit in the refrigerator.

And after it was invented here,

it became the common bottle for the whole industry.

[narrator] Today, this design has been adopted

by other breweries across the world.

In an interesting twist,

these bottles played a part in winning a global conflict,

when in 1941,

America entered World War II.

[Jim] In World War II,

so many industries were taken over by the government

to work on military production.

But beer was considered a product that was important for the morale of the country.

So Olympia continued to make their beer,

but they did have to supply 15% of their output to the US military.

[Greg] Can you imagine being a GI

far overseas in a completely foreign place,

and when it comes time to relax,

having that little bit of home in your hand?

[narrator] But just months after entering the war,

the beer industry found itself in direct conflict with the military.

[Karen] There was a national metal shortage.

Metal was saved for military purposes.

[narrator] This temporarily spelled the end of the beer can,

which was outlawed in 1942,

leaving Olympia's stubbies

as an accidentally patriotic alternative.

[Paul] The stubby bottle was the ideal package for the product,

because it was glass,

and it used only a very small amount of metal for the cap.

[narrator] By keeping metal flowing into the war factories,

in just four years,

America produced 86,000 tanks,

and 2,000,000 trucks.

Although the stubby played its part,

just five years later, with the war won,

and the metallic taste gone,

Olympia finally adopted the beer can.

Their business just skyrocketed.

[Paul] The brewery, at one time

was the seventh largest in the nation.

It produced over 4,000,000 barrels per year.

[narrator] But the good times

didn't last.

In the 1980s,

rival brands grew exponentially,

and began monopolizing the beer market.

[Jim] We had the rise of the big national brands

that could advertise on the Super Bowl,

that could ship their beer all around the country.

[Hadley] Olympia Beer just can't keep up.

They don't have the name recognition.

[Paul] In 2003,

the brewery ceased production.

The community was in shock.

But I just hated the loss of...

...what I considered the greatest place to work in the world.

[narrator] Twenty years after Olympia Beer stopped production in Tumwater,

the original brewery is making a comeback...

...as the city is looking to breathe new life into the tower.

[Karen] There's been talk about the whole site becoming commercial space.

Maybe a museum, which would be great.

[narrator] Perhaps one day, beer might even be brewed here once again.

I'm hoping to come back here in some time in the not too distant future

to enjoy the the ambience of the place

and have a nice cold beer.

[narrator] In the Deep South,

one deserted building was the site of a tragedy

that had a huge impact on the nation.

[Wheeler Parker] What transpired here,

you can never forget that

because it was a moment that changed history.

This is Money, Mississippi,

a tiny town right on the edge of the Mississippi Delta.

[Kenya Davis-Hayes] It's got a population of under 100 people,

and all of the buildings are centered along one long road.

[narrator] Compared to the rest,

one structure seems dilapidated.

[Philip J. Merrill] The building is overgrown with vegetation.

You really wonder,

"How has it been left dormant for so long?"

One reason this site has been left empty

is because it's connected to a crime that sparked a movement

transforming the lives of millions of Americans.

When my cousin lost his life here,

I am the last eyewitness that was alive.

It denotes a time in history

where black lives did not matter.

[narrator] In rural Money, Mississippi,

Wheeler Parker is visiting a place

he came to 68 years ago that changed his life.

[Wheeler] You wish it had never happened.

You can't go back and change lives.

I'm an old man now at 84.

I was 16 at the time.

[narrator] Before the vegetation took over,

this was a bustling country store,

one that Wheeler Parker visited as a boy

with his cousin and close friend, Emmett Till.

[Wheeler] He loved to make people laugh.

He... He was a prankster,

and he's a jokester.

He was always the center of attraction.

[narrator] In the summer of 1955,

Wheeler's 14-year-old cousin

visited Mississippi on a train from Chicago.

The time the treatment of African Americans

would have been very different.

[Sascha Auerback] The South was in many ways still stuck.

You still had extrajudicial murder,

attacks, and lynchings.

[narrator] Wheeler's cousin had been warned by his mother about these Southern ways.

On August 24th, 1955,

he came here to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market.

My cousin, Emmett Till, came to the stores to purchase some things.

I left him in there by himself.

Emmett was briefly in the store alone

with the white shop keeper Carolyn Bryant

before another relative joined him.

I went out in front of the store

my uncle Simeon came in to be with him

so nothing happened, they came out from the store together.

[narrator] What happened next is engrained in the minds of many who grew up here,

like local Mayor, Johnny B. Thomas.

[Johnny B. Thomas] She came out the store angry.

Carolyn Bryant headed toward her vehicle,

and that is when the infamous

[wolf whistles] took place.

Emmett Till wolf-whistled her.

[Wheeler] When I heard the whistle,

it was like a death notice

'cause we knew that he had violated the Southern law.

So we all made a beeline for the cop.

Now Emmett is upset.

He's scared, and asking us not to tell my grandfather what happened.

The boys quickly returned to the house of Wheeler Parker's

grandfather, Mose Wright.

For three days, they quietly went about their normal lives and nothing happened.

But that was about to change

when two white men knocked on the door of the Wright home.

[Wheeler] About 2:30 in the morning I heard these people talking.

I heard them at the door asking about the boys you have here from Chicago.

[narrator] The men were Roy Bryant,

the shopkeeper, Carolyn's husband,

and his half-brother, J.W. Milam.

They were armed, and demanding retribution.

[Wheeler] They came to the house, to get him.

I could see them eventually.

I see a flashlight in one hand

and a pistol in the other hand.

And I just started shaking like a leaf on the tree,

and started praying to God,

and asking God to just let me live.

[narrator] Once they found Emmett,

Bryant and Milam forced him into a truck

and drove to a nearby farm.

What happened next would send shockwaves across the country.

After 14-year-old Emmett Till wolf-whistled

a white shopkeeper at this store in rural Mississippi,

things had taken a dark twist.

Gloria Dickinson grew up in this area where

the story of these events has not been forgotten.

[Gloria] This is where Emmett Till was taken on the night

that he was kidnapped.

While he was here, they beat him and beat him

and beat him to the point where he just screamed and screamed and screamed.

He was hanged from those beams up there.

The walls here, it's sad to say,

was the last walls that Emmett Till saw in his life.

[narrator] After their heinous acts, his killers, Roy Bryant

and J.W. Milam, needed to dispose of Emmett's body.

A 75-pound cotton gin fan was tied around Emmett's neck

with barbed wire, hiding his body

in the Tallahatchie River for three days.

On August the 31st, 1955, a fisherman found the body

of Emmett Till in the Tallahatchie River.

[narrator] Shortly after the body was found,

an undertaker began to dig a grave for Emmett at a nearby church.

But his mother had other ideas.

Mrs. Till insisted that they bring her child home

to Chicago.

The casket arrived in the Windy City nailed shut

with a seal from the state of Mississippi ordering it to stay that way.

Yet in an act of defiance, Emmett's mother insisted on

seeing her son once more.

His face was completely disfigured and his entire body

was swollen.

[Sacha] When Mamie Till, Emmett's mother,

sees her son's body and sees what happened here

as a result of those events at the grocery and meat market,

she makes a remarkable decision,

one that will change the course of American history.

She said, let the world see what I see.

[narrator] Mamie Till stuck to her word and allowed a nationwide

African-American magazine access to Emmett's body.

So a photographer was allowed to take this picture

that haunts everybody decades later.

[Kenya] And they described the scene of Mamie crying out.

You have not died in vain.

Your life has been sacrificed for something.

Pictures of Emmett Till's body created incredible outrage

across the nation, specifically in

the African-American community.

[narrator] But the magazine coverage wasn't Mamie's only

courageous decision.

Mamie Till made the unexpected,

brave decision to have an open casket funeral.

Where all of the world would see the disfigured body

of her son.

[narrator] On September 3rd, 1955,

Emmett's funeral began.

[Wheeler] I saw Emmett's body at the funeral.

And I said, "This is not Emmett."

[narrator] But there is no doubt it was Emmett in the casket

for all to see.

Over 50,000 people turned out to view the body

of young Emmett Till.

[narrator] Emmett's body was left on display for five days.

While there was outrage in Chicago, in Mississippi,

the laws of the South were on the verge of being turned upside down.

On September 19th, 1955, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam

went on trial for the murder of Emmett Till.

[Sacha] It's one of the first times in American history

that white men had been arrested and charged for

the killing of an African American.

[narrator] Their trial took place nearly 30 miles from Bryant's Grocery

and Meat Market in Sumner, Mississippi.

On the witness stand, Carolyn Bryant would give her version of events.

[Gloria] Now, she said that he touched her hand.

But now she said some other things that he did that I'm not sure is true.

She said he put his hand, his arms around her waist

and asked her on a date.

[Wheeler] Nothing happened. Nothing was said.

When I was there, nothing was said. Out of line.

[narrator] For the men to be found guilty,

they had to be placed at the crime.

And the prosecution had a witness on their side.

At the trial, there was an African-American eyewitness

who testified that he saw the truck that

they brought Emmett Till over to the barn.

This evidence, combined with the testimony of Emmett Till's uncle,

who identified correctly the two men

that had abducted Emmett, in a court of law today,

this would be pretty strong evidence leading to a guilty verdict.

[narrator] But in 1950s Mississippi, the result was very different.

It took the all-white jury just 67 minutes

to give a not guilty verdict.

That demonstrates the depth of racism

and prejudice across the South.

[narrator] Despite the trial being over, no one could have predicted

the audacity that the murderers would show

just months later.

After the trial, Look Magazine published an article

in which it talked about J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant

confessing to the murder.

And they didn't mind confessing because

they weren't ashamed of doing it. They were proud that they did it.

[narrator] Tragically, the men were never punished for their crimes.

Yet their actions would energize a movement

which would irreversibly change the law of the nation.

In Mississippi, the killers of Emmett Till

may have gotten away with murder,

but their action had sparked something that couldn't be stopped.

[Philip] The story that happened here in this building is such

a seminal moment in the civil rights movement.

[Sacha] The murder of Emmett Till convinced so many

in the African-American population that they just couldn't take it any longer.

[narrator] African Americans across the country came together

to call for direct action.

As the movement was gaining momentum,

one woman's brave actions would prove pivotal.

[Kenya] Exactly 100 days after the death of Emmett Till,

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat

on a Montgomery public bus.

[Johnny] She thought about what they did to Emmett

in Mississippi, and she froze.

[Kenya] Her defiance spurred a boycott

of the Montgomery busing system.

And ultimately, that boycott was led by

a young 26-year-old minister

by the name of Martin Luther King Jr.

[narrator] The difficult years after the murder of Emmett Till

galvanized the hearts of Americans across

the country and led to Congress passing

the Civil Rights Act, ending the age of segregation.

[Gloria] It's part sad and it's part good.

And I think the good outweighs the sad.

He made a sacrifice that he didn't even know

that he was making at the time.

And the country was changed through the Civil Rights Movement

because of what happened.

Today, nearly 70 years later,

the story of Emmett Till

has been firmly written into the history books of America.

A number of locations have been designated as

the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument,

including the place where Emmett's body was discovered,

the church where his funeral took place,

and the historic courthouse.

But the building where this tragic tale began

has nearly disappeared.

[Wheeler] I would love to see this building restored.

I was looking at some bricks around and they still seem to be very solid.

There's a lot of history here and we need to fix it

so that we remember history because if you don't,

it is subject to repeat it.

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