Woman whose accusation led to Emmett Till’s lynching dies of cancer
A woman whose accusation led to the lynching of black teen Emmett Till has died, aged 88.
Carolyn Bryant Donham died in Mississippi while receiving hospice care after a battle with cancer, Mississippi Today reported on Thursday. She was never prosecuted in the Till saga.
Some individuals ‘have been clinging to hope that she could be prosecuted. She was the last remaining person who had any involvement,’ said Devery Anderson, the author of Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.
‘Now that can’t happen.’
Aged 21 in August 1955, Donham claimed that Till, who had just turned 14, wolf-whistled her at a store in Money. Her husband Roy Bryant and brother-in-law JW Milam then kidnapped Till, beat and lynched him.
Donham’s allegation was never proven or disproven.
An all-white jury acquitted Bryant and Milam. They later confessed that they had killed Till, which fired up the civil rights movement.
Donham’s death comes a year after a grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict her over Till’s lynching.
Till’s mother decided to leave her son’s casket open for ‘the world see what they did to my boy’.
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