ITHACA -- Submitted for your approval, finally.

More than a half-century after it was twice censored by network television, Rod Serling's story on the notorious 1955 lynching of Emmett Till and his message about prejudice will finally be told the way Serling wanted.

The original stage script of Serling's "Noon on Doomsday" will be read Saturday at Ithaca College during a conference on "The Life and Legacy of Rod Serling." The award-winning writer and creator of "The Twilight Zone" taught at Ithaca from 1967 until 1975, when he died.

"Serling seemed to struggle with network and sponsor censorship all his career but I believe his trying to tell the story of the Emmett Till case was the pinnacle of this battle," said Andrew Polak, the board president of the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation, a Binghamton-based nonprofit group that works to further Serling's legacy.

"This will be the first time the story will be told as Rod intended," Polak said.

Historians view Till's case as one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement. Till was a black 14-year-old from Chicago who whistled at a white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi. The two men accused of kidnapping and brutally murdering Till were acquitted, though they later admitted to the crime.

Serling tried twice to dramatize Till's murder and the acquittal of his killers. In both cases, the writer met with sponsor censorship and network interference that diluted his final work, said researchers Tony Albarella and Amy E. Boyle Johnston.

For more on this story, read Thursday's edition of The Citizen.




On the Web:

Serling Conference: www.ithaca.edu/rhp/serling

Rod Serling Memorial Foundation: www.rodserling.com