Grand jury decides against charging white woman whose lies likely fueled Emmett Till's lynching
A Mississippi grand jury has decided not to indict the white woman, now in her 80s, whose lie is said to have motivated the mob that killed 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955, prosecutors announced on Tuesday.
Till, a Black boy from Chicago, was visiting family in Mississippi when he is said to have whistled at Carolyn Bryant Donham on a trip to the store she worked at. According to a Vanity Fair profile of author Timothy Tyson's effort to catch up with Donham years after Emmett’s death, Donham was married to Roy Bryant at the time, who with his half-brother J.W. Milam, was accused of lynching and brutally beating Emmett to death. Donham's court testimony helped free the men.
Donham told Tyson when she was 72 years old that she made up much of her testimony. Since then, Till's relatives were able to unearth from court documents an unserved warrant for Donham dating back to 1955. They had hope it would finally lead to jail time for Donham.
Although Roy Bryant and Milam were acquitted of murder charges, Donham was never arrested in Emmett’s death. Leflore County District Attorney Dewayne Richardson said in a news release obtained by The Associated Press that the grand jury determined, after upward of seven hours of testimony from witnesses and investigators, that the evidence to charge her now with kidnapping or manslaughter was insufficient.
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