JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – Shonda Rhimes, an acclaimed TV producer and screenwriter, donated to the Emmett Till Interpretive Center to secure the Seed Barn in Sunflower County, Mississippi.

The barn is where 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered in 1955. The Emmett Till Interpretive Center will work to restore the site.

Rhimes made the announcement about the donation on Good Morning America on Monday, December 18.

“The murder of Emmett Till was the real fire that lit the civil rights movement in so many ways.” Rhimes said. “I don’t think I’d ever known where it happened, where a child had been tortured and killed. I couldn’t let it go. I kept thinking about it for weeks afterwards. It changed the course of how I was thinking about my charitable giving. It changed the course of how I was even thinking about preserving history. It was powerful.”

“Thanks to the generosity of Ms. Rhimes and the tireless efforts of numerous organizations, a pivotal location in Emmett Till’s story, which ignited the Civil Rights Movement, is approaching permanent protection,” said Rev. Willie Williams, Chair of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center Board of Directors. “This barn, the site of a terrible crime against a child and a site intentionally obscured to protect those guilty, has been under private ownership for sixty years, serving merely as storage. But today, it moves closer to being rightfully preserved in American history, marking a transition from a place of profound suffering to one of healing and remembrance.”