Emmett Till, Carolyn Bryant Donham.Photo: AP; Gene Herrick/AP
According toThe New York Times, theAssociated PressandMississippi Today, citing the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office, Carolyn Bryant Donham died Tuesday while in hospice care in Westlake, La. She was 88.
Mississippi Todayreports Donham had cancer at the time of her death.
Donham, who was a 21-year-old shopkeeper in Money, Miss., at the time of Till’s killing, accused the teen of propositioning her and lewdly grabbing her at her family’s grocery store on Aug. 24, 1955.
Originally from Chicago, Till was in the area visiting family.
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In September of that year, Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and Bryant’s half-brother, J.W. Milam, were tried for murder in Till’s death.
After an hour-long deliberation, an all-White, all-male jury acquitted the pair — who, when they were no longer facing legal jeopardy, admitted in a 1956 interview inLookmagazine that they were guilty of the murder.
Photographs of Till’s mutilated body taken at his funeral in Chicago were printed in the media and caused outrage around the country and overseas. His lynching, and the subsequent acquittal of his killers, became a catalyst of the national civil rights movement.
In 2007,Donham reportedly recanted part of her story.
In her memoir, which she intended to remain under seal until 2036, Donham claims that, like Till, she was a victim who “paid dearly with an altered life” for his murder and lynching.
In August 2022, citing insufficient evidence, a grand jury declined to indict Donham on kidnapping and manslaughter charges for the role she played in Till’s death.
At the time, Emmet’s cousin, Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr., who was reportedly the last living witness to the teen’s kidnapping, called the jury’s decision, “unfortunate, but predictable,” according to the AP.
source: people.com
