Emmett Till's cousin says the death of Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose accusations led to the teen's lynching, will not bring his family closure: 'Death can never provide justice owed'

• The white woman whose accusations led to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till has died. 
• Carolyn Bryant Donham died Tuesday night in Westlake, Louisiana, at the age of 88. 
• Till's cousin said that Donham's death doesn't bring the family any "closure or justice."

Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose improper advances accusations about 14-year-old Emmett Till led to the Black boy's brutal 1955 lynching in Mississippi has died — but her death doesn't bring the family any "closure or justice," a relative of the teen victim said.

Donham died Tuesday night in hospice care aged 88 in Westlake, Louisiana, the Associated Press reported, citing a death report from the Calcasieu Parish Coroner's Office. 

"Carolyn's death does not bring my family closure or justice, because death can never provide justice owed," Till's cousin, Joshua Harris-Till, told The Black Wall Street Times. 

Harris-Till added, "Carolyn was simply evidence of the much bigger issue, now the only issue, which is the fact that the justice system is not just."

"It didn't care about Emmett 68 years ago and with the release of so many officers who've killed unarmed Black and Brown people we're reminded that it doesn't care now," Till's cousin told the news outlet. 

The New York Times reported in 2017 that Donham had told a historian that her allegations about Till were false.

In August 1955, Donham accused Till of making a sexually suggestive remark to her and grabbing her by the waist. Afterwards, Till was kidnapped, beaten, and shot in the head on August 28, 1955, in Jim Crow-era Money, Mississippi. The teen boy's mangled body was thrown in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a cotton-gin fan.

When Till's body was pulled out, his face was unrecognizable. But his mother demanded an open casket funeral in Chicago to show the sheer brutality of what her son had endured.

Donham's then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were arrested and charged with murder in connection with the lynching. The men were later acquitted in the killing by a white, all-male jury, but admitted to killing Till the next year in a Look magazine article.

Decades of fighting for Till and the truth

Till's murder was a watershed in the growing civil rights movement in the US in the 1950s and 1960s, ultimately contributing to the end of Jim Crow.

 In 2017, the Justice Department reopened the investigation into Till's murder after reports in a book that Donham recanted her account of the encounter with Till. The case quickly soured after the Justice Department said there was insufficient evidence for federal charges. When questioned directly, Donham adamantly denied that she had recanted her testimony to investigators.

Despite the setback, family and advocates of Till refused to give up.

"We cannot allow his death to be in vain," Deborah Watts, one of Till's cousins, told Insider in 2021.

Bryant disappeared from the public eye. She came under renewed scrutiny in 2022, when a 1955 warrant calling for her arrest was discovered in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. The discovery recatalyzed calls from Till's relatives for Donham's arrest, but a Grand Jury declined to indict her, again citing insufficient evidence.