Emmett Till accuser Carolyn Bryant Donham dead at 88

The Mississippi woman who accused Emmett Till of harassing her shortly before his brutal death in 1955 has died in hospice care. She was 88.

Carolyn Bryant Donham’s death was confirmed Thursday by the coroner’s office in Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish, according to Mississippi Today.

In August 1955, Donham claimed Till harassed her at a store in Money, Miss., while he was visiting from Chicago. His body was later found beaten and mutilated with a bullet to the head. Till was 14. He became one of the most indelible images of the nation’s civil right’s movement after his mother, Mamie Till, insisted on an open-casket funeral for her son.

“I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby,” she said.

More than 50,000 people attended his funeral, which inspired the 2022 film “Till.”

Donham’s ex-husband, Roy Bryant, admitted he and his half-brother killed Till after being told the boy acted inappropriately toward his wife — but that confession came after Bryant was acquitted by an all-white jury.

Donham, who divorced Bryant in 1975, had accused Till of whistling at her. The claim has continued to draw skepticism over the years since Till’s death.

News of Donham’s death may come with some sadness to Till’s cousin Patricia Sterling, who in February filed a lawsuit compelling a Mississippi sheriff to serve the elderly woman with a discarded 1955 arrest warrant unearthed in a Leflore County, Miss., courthouse last year.