CHICAGO — The white woman who accused Black teen Emmett Till of grabbing and whistling at her before he was kidnapped and lynched in 1955 has died.
Carolyn Bryant Donham died Tuesday in Westlake, Louisiana, according to a report from the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office obtained by USA TODAY. She was 88.
Till’s lynching shocked the nation and fueled the civil rights movement. Donham was never charged in the crime.
Till, who was 14, had traveled from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi that summer. Donham, then 21, accused him of making lewd remarks and grabbing her while she worked at a family grocery store in Money, Mississippi.
Three days later, Till was abducted on Aug. 28. His body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down with a cotton gin fan.
Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his brother, J.W. Milam, were charged with murder but acquitted by an all-white jury. Months later, Look magazine published an account of the killing it said it obtained from the men, who admitted beating Till and tossing him in the river.
Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, held an open-casket viewing in Chicago to allow the public to see what had been done to her son, and she allowed the Black press to photograph his body. Tens of thousands of people paid their respects.
In an unpublished memoir, Donham said the men brought Till to her for identification and that she was unaware of what would happen to him, according to the Associated Press, which obtained the 99-page manuscript in 2022 after it was reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.
The Justice Department reopened the case in 2004 but closed it in 2007 with no further charges filed. The department then reopened it again in 2017 “after receiving new information” but again closed it in 2021.
In June, a team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching found an unserved warrant charging Donham in the killing. A Mississippi grand jury in August declined to indict her.
Last year, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime.
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