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.
Till, who was 14, had traveled from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi that summer when Donham, 21, accused him of making lewd remarks and grabbing her while she worked at a family grocery store in Money.
Till was abducted three days later, on Aug. 28. His body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River.
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, weighed down with a 74-pound cotton gin fan.
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.
The Justice Department reopened an investigation into the murder in 2017 “after receiving new information,” but it did not elaborate. The department closed its investigation in 2021, and a Mississippi grand jury last year declined to indict Donham.
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USA TODAY
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