Carolyn Bryant Donham, woman at center of Emmett Till lynching, dies at 88

Grace Hauck, USA TODAY
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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 late Tuesday in Westlake, Louisiana, according to a report from the Calcasieu Parish Coroner's Office obtained by USA TODAY. She was 88.

The lynching of 14-year-old Till in the Jim Crow South shocked the nation and fueled the civil rights movement. Donham was never charged in the crime.

"Even though no one will be held to account for the death of my cousin and best friend, it is up to all of us to be accountable to the challenges we still face in overcoming racial injustice," the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., who witnessed the interaction with Donham, said in a statement. He also sent his condolences to Donham's family.

What happened to Emmett Till?

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.

A few days later, Donham's then-husband, his brother and at least one other person abducted Till in the early morning hours of Aug. 28, according to the U.S. Justice Department. His body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down with a cotton gin fan tied to his body with barbed wire.

State officials charged Roy Bryant, Donham's husband, and J.W. Milam with murder, and Donham testified at trial. The men were acquitted by an all-white jury. Months later, Look magazine published an account of the killing it said it obtained from the two 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, and the killing garnered international attention.

'Let the world see': Church where 100K saw Emmett Till's open casket on a list of endangered historic places

In an unpublished memoir, Donham said the men brought Till to her for identification and that she was unaware of what would happen to him, according to the Associated Press,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.

Milam died in 1980, and Bryant died in 1994.

DOJ: 'Considerable doubt' about Donham's account

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 a professor alleged in a book that Donham had changed her previous account of the incident. But the department closed the case in 2021.

"The government does not take the position that the state court testimony the woman gave in 1955 was truthful or accurate," the department said. "There remains considerable doubt as to the credibility of her version of events, which is contradicted by others who were with Till at the time, including the account of a living witness."

Mississippi grand jury declines to indict Donham

In June last year, 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 on charges of kidnapping and manslaughter.

Last year, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, culminating a more than century-long effort to make lynching a federal hate crime.

Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi, said Donham's "lies in 1955 put the torture of Emmett in motion."

"She continued to uphold these lies and to protect the murderers until her death," he said. "While the world saw the horrors of racism, and the real consequences of hatred, what the world will never see is remorse or responsibility for Emmett’s death."

Dig deeper on Emmett Till

Contributing: N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Emmett Till lynching: Accuser Carolyn Bryant Donham dies at 88