A jury in the US state of Mississippi has all but guaranteed that Carolyn Donham, the woman at the centre of the 1955 Emmett Till lynching, will never face legal consequences.
Donham's allegations against the black teenager were the catalyst for his death.
The fact that Donham, who at the time was known as Carolyn Bryant, is still alive remains a reminder that racial segregation and its consequences are recent history.
Context around the crime
In 1955, segregation laws were still widespread in the US, particularly in the southern states, where Jim Crow laws prevented black people from using many of the same facilities as white people.
Racial tensions were increasing due to the US Supreme Court's decision to end segregated public schools in 1954.
Throughout the US south, interracial relationships were prohibited.
It would be over a decade before the case of Loving v Virginia saw the US Supreme Court overturn laws to made interracial marriage legal.
When Emmett Till crossed paths with Carolyn Bryant
Born in Chicago in 1941, Till was 14 when he travelled from his home to stay with his great uncle in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi.
Three days after he arrived in Mississippi, he and his cousins skipped church to buy candy at a local grocery store.
There, he encountered 21-year-old mother of two Carolyn Donham (then known as Carolyn Bryant).
Donham alleged at the time that Till whistled at her before grabbing her waist and making sexually suggestive remarks towards her.
In 2017, historian Timothy Tyson released a 2008 interview with Donham, during which he alleged she fabricated part of her story.
Of her former account that Till had grabbed her waist and uttered obscenities, Bryant said "that part's not true".
After relaying the encounter to her husband, Roy Bryant, he and his half-brother J W Milam kidnapped Till.
The two men beat the teenager before shooting him and throwing him into Tallahatchie River with a 35-kilogram fan tied to him to weigh him down.
His mutilated body was retrieved from the river three days later. It was one of the most infamous cases of lynching in the 20th century.
An open casket illustrates the horror of lynching
Even though Till's body was severely disfigured from the beating and three days submerged in the river, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted upon having an open-casket funeral so people could witness the horrors of the US segregation system.
"There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see," Till-Mobley is quoted as saying at the time.
Graphic photos of the 14-year-old boy's body were published by JET magazine and led to a national outcry from the black community.
"JET's circulation just took off when they ran the picture. They had to reprint, the first time they ever reprinted JET magazine. And there was a lot of interest in that case." journalist Simeon Booker said.
"The entire black community was becoming aware of the need to do something about it."
In 2016, TIME magazine declared the JET photo of Till's body one of the most influential images of all time.
An all-white, all-male jury and a confession
Bryant and Milam were charged with kidnapping after Emmett Till was reported missing and later indicted on murder charges after the recovery of the boy's body.
The charges went before an all-white, all-male jury in October 1955.
It took the jury just over an hour to reach a not-guilty verdict.
Speaking to TIME magazine, one juror said: "If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long."
Bryant was never formally charged for her part in the killing and was barred by the judge from recounting her story at the trial as it was deemed irrelevant to the issues before the court.
Three months after the trial, Look magazine journalist William Bradford Huie interviewed Bryant and Milum.
Protected by double jeopardy, which ensures accused people cannot be retried for crimes after being found not guilty, the men confessed to killing Till.
"What else could I do?" Milam said when asked why he killed the teen.
"He thought he was as good as any white man."
The Emmett Till case's influence remains seven decades later
The lynching of Emmett Till, the confession of his killers and the public outcry that followed were instrumental in furthering the civil rights movement in the US.
In November 1955, Rosa Parks attended a rally to hear Mississippi activist T R M Howard speak about Emmett Till's lynching.
A month later, she would refuse to give up her bus seat for a white passenger, in a case that received national attention and sparked bus boycotts as a form of civil rights protest.
Years later, when asked why she refused to give up her seat, Parks said: "I thought of Emmett Till and I couldn't go back."
In 1957, the US Congress passed civil rights legislation that allowed the US Department of Justice to intervene in local law enforcement issues when civil rights were being threatened.
Just this year the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law by President Joe Biden, which makes lynching – defined as an extrajudicial killing by a group – a federal hate crime.
Why is this all coming up now?
There are a number of reasons the story of Emmett Till is making news in 2022 aside from Donham's trial.
An unpublished version of a memoir written by Donham was obtained by The Associated Press last month.
In the memoir, the 87-year-old said she did not identify Till to the killers and did not want him killed.
Historian and author Timothy Tyson said he obtained a copy of the memoir, titled I am More Than a Wolf Whistle, from Donham while interviewing her in 2008.
Tyson had archived the 99-page manuscript at the University of North Carolina with the agreement that it would not be made public for decades.
However, he said he gave it to the FBI during an investigation that concluded last year.
Tyson said he decided to go public with the memoir after a group searching the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse discovered the unserved arrest warrant charging Donham, Bryant and Milam in Till's abduction.
In October, MGM will release Till, a biopic that will focus on Emmett Till's mother Mamie Till Mobley as she fights for justice after the lynching of her son.
