Emmett Till’s family has been seeking the prosecution of his accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose claims led to his kidnapping and brutal murder in 1955.
According to news reports, Till’s relatives have called on authorities to initiate the prosecution of Donham, the white woman who said the Black teen whistled at her. FBI records indicated that she was named in a kidnapping warrant that accused her of the teen’s abduction over 65 years ago before his body was discovered in Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River. He was tragically beaten, lynched, shot in the head, mutilated, and thrown in the river.
However, the woman was never arrested nor brought to trial in Till’s historical case. Authorities during that time reportedly said they didn’t want to bother her since she had two young kids. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam were targeted instead, and an all-white jury acquitted them of the Chicago boy’s murder.
Since there was no evidence that the warrant was dismissed, it could be used to arrest the now-88-year-old and bring her to criminal court, said Till’s family’s attorney, Jaribu Hill.
“This warrant is a stepping stone toward that because warrants do not expire. We want to see that warrant served on her,” she said.
Its location has reportedly been unknown, as it could possibly be stored in boxes of very old courthouse records in Leflore County, Miss.
“Mississippi is not the Mississippi of 1955, but it seems to still carry some of that era of protecting the white woman,” said a distant cousin of Till, Deborah Watts. She has reportedly been running the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, which was founded in 2005 to “preserve the memory and legacy of Emmett Louis Till.”
The news of the Till family’s most recent pursuit arrived nearly a month after President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill in March. The bill has officially made lynching a hate crime hundreds of years after the heinous act has repeatedly been committed around the U.S.
