The white woman whose accusation led to the murder of a young, Black, boy in 1955 has died.
Carolyn Bryant Donham died on Tuesday in Louisiana at the age of 88, as confirmed by the Calcasieu Parish coroner’s office to CNN.
Malik Shabazz, with Black Lawyers for Justice, gave a statement following Donham’s passing.
“Carolyn Bryant’s death brings a conclusion to a painful chapter for the Emmett Till family and for Black peoples (sic) in America. The tragic part about Bryant’s death was that she was never held accountable for her role in the death of young Emmett Till, who is the martyr for the Civil Rights Movement,” he said.
In 1955, Donham accused 14-year-old Till of whistling at her inside a grocery store in Mississippi, according to History.
Four days later, Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, kidnapped Till while he was sleeping in his uncle’s home.
The brothers then brutally beat him and mutilated him. After shooting Till in the head, they “tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan” and proceeded to push his body into the Tallahatchie River.
Till’s mutilated body was shipped to Chicago where he had an open-casket funeral at the request of his mother as evidence for the hate crime.
The gruesome photo of Till’s body was featured on the cover of the Black publication, Jet Magazine, which sparked immense outrage.
In 1956, both Bryant and Milam admitted to killing Till in an interview with Look Magazine.
Despite their admission, they were acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury.
During the trial, Donham testified that Till flirted with her and “grabbed her hand and waist and propositioned her,” according to CNN. She alleged that Till told her he had been with “white women before.”
However, Professor Timothy Tyson, who wrote “The Blood of Emmett Till,” released in 2017, claimed Donham admitted to lying about her accusations toward Till in an interview in 2008.
“That part’s not true,” she said.
According to the New York Times, Donham told Tyson, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.”
In 2022, Jaribu Hill, the attorney for the Till family, told CNN that she wanted to see Donham held responsible for the part she played in his murder.
“That would be justice in its truest form for us to see that,” she shared. “Also, justice would look like people being forced to do their duties, to actually let the system itself work on behalf of this young boy who was brutally lynched and nothing was done.”
