US woman whose accusation led to Emmett Till murder dies

The brutality of Till’s lynching in 1955, seen at his open-casket funeral, set the American civil rights movement in motion.

The white woman who accused black teen Emmett Till of making inappropriate advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 has died in a United States hospice, a coroner’s report shows.

Carolyn Bryant Donham, 88, died Tuesday night in Westlake, Louisiana, according to a death report filed Thursday at the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office in Louisiana.

Till’s kidnapping and murder became a catalyst for the American civil rights movement. After his battered body was retrieved from a river in Mississippi, his mother pushed for an open casket burial in their hometown of Chicago. Jet magazine published photos.

Till traveled from Chicago in August 1955 to visit relatives in Mississippi. Donham – then known as Carolyn Bryant – accused him of making inappropriate advances towards her at a grocery store in the small community of Money.

Reverend Wheeler Parker, Till’s cousin who was present at the time, said the 14-year-old whistled at the woman, an act that went against Mississippi’s racist social codes of the time.

There is evidence that a woman identified Till with her then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother JW Milam, who killed the teen. An all-white jury acquitted the two white men of the murder, but the men later confessed in an interview with Look magazine.

In an unpublished memoir obtained by The Associated Press in 2022, Donham said she didn’t know what would happen to 14-year-old Till. Donham was 21 at the time.

The contents of the 99-page manuscript, titled I am More Than A Wolf Whistle, were first reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.

Historian and author Timothy Tyson of Durham, North Carolina — who said he got a copy from Donham when he interviewed her in 2008 — gave a copy to The Associated Press.

Tyson had placed the manuscript in a University of North Carolina archive with an agreement that it would not be made public for decades, though he said he gave it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation during an investigation the agency will conclude in 2021 .

He said he decided to go public after people investigating at the courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi, found an arrest warrant on kidnapping charges issued for “Mrs. Roy Bryant” in 1955, but never served.

Tyson said in a statement Thursday that Donham’s exact role in Till’s murder remains murky, but it’s clear she was involved.

“It’s comforted America to see this as just a story about monsters, including them,” Tyson said.

“What this story keeps us from seeing is the monstrous social order that didn’t care about Emmett Till’s life, nor thousands more like him. Neither the federal government nor the Mississippi government did anything to prevent or punish this murder. Condemning what Donham did is easier than confronting what America was – and is.”

Weeks after the unserved warrant was found, Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office in Mississippi said there was no new evidence to pursue a criminal case against Donham. In August, a prosecutor said a Leflore County grand jury declined to indict Donham.

Till’s cousin, Priscilla Sterling, filed a federal lawsuit on Feb. 7 against current Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks to force him to serve the 1955 warrant against Donham.

In a response dated April 13, Banks’ attorney said there was no point serving the warrant on Donham because the grand jury had not indicted her last year.