What did Carolyn Bryant Donham do? Emmett Till accuser dies at the age of 88

Carolyn Bryant Donham who accused Emmett Till dies at 88 (Image via YouTube/@Inside Edition)
Carolyn Bryant Donham who accused Emmett Till dies at 88 (Image via YouTube/@Inside Edition)

Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose accusations against Emmett Till led to the infamous lynching of the black teen in 1955, died on Tuesday, April 25, 2023. She breathed her last in Westlake, Mississippi, at the age of 88.

According to the Associated Press, Donham died in hospice care as per the report provided to them by the Calcasieu Parish Coroner's Office.

In 1955, Carolyn, who was 21 at the time, accused Till, a 14-year-old boy, of making lewd remarks towards her and grabbing her waist. Her husband and his brother would later kidnap and murder the teenager.

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His mother would demand an open-casket funeral to show the world the mangled and unrecognizable body of her son. The sheer brutality of the crime rocked the nation, fueling the Civil Rights Movement. In a statement, his mother remarked:

"There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see."

In a statement, Malik Shabazz of Black Lawyers for Justice described Carolyn Bryant Donham's legacy as, "one of dishonesty and injustice."

The two accused were arrested and tried for the killing but later acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury. Both men would admit to the killing in an interview with Look Magazine a year after the incident.


Unserved arrest warrant from 1955 calling for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham was found in a Mississippi courthouse basement

Carolyn Bryant Donham accused Emmett Till, a Chicago native who was visiting his relatives in Mississippi, of whistling at her and grabbing her waist at a grocery store. Till's conduct was considered against the racist social codes present in the South during the Jim Crow era.

Several days after the incident, Carolyn's then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, John Milam, kidnapped Till at gunpoint. Allegedly, a woman believed to be Carolyn identified the teenager to the two men.

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The men brought him to Tallahatchie River, beat him up, and fatally shot him in the head on August 28, 1955. The boy's mangled and unrecognizable body was found three days later weighed down using a large fan in the Tallahatchie River using barbed wire.

According to the Associated Press, despite an arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham at the time, the county sheriff told reporters he did not want to "bother" her as she has "two young children to care for." It also states that she could not be located at the time and hence was not charged.


68 years after the incident

In Carolyn Bryant Donham's unpublished memoir, I am More Than A Wolf Whistle, she explains that she was unaware of what would happen to Emmett. She adds that she refused to identify him to her husband and brother-in-law in order to protect him.

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The Department of Justice reopened the case looking into Carolyn's part in the crime. The move came after Professor Timothy Tyson, in his book, The Blood of Emmett Till, claimed that she "recanted" her testimony to the investigators.

However, after Donahan denied doing the same, the case was closed in 2021 after DOJ's Civil Rights Division found inconclusive evidence to prove she lied.

Previously in 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Donham. In his book, Tyson wrote that she expressed "sadness over Till's death," and "was glad that things (have) changed."

Carolyn Bryant Donham was the only surviving member of the trio involved in Emmett's lynching.

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Edited by Prem Deshpande
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