A white woman whose accusation against black teenager Emmett Till led to his lynching and murder has died.
Carolyn Bryant Donham, 88, died in a hospice in Louisiana on Tuesday.
Prosecutors sought charges against her for the killing of the 14-year-old up until the year before her death.
Last year, they failed to convince a grand jury that she should be put on trial for kidnapping and manslaughter.
A statement from the Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley Institute said that they “wish mercy on her soul, even as we regret that she never took responsibility for her role” in the boy’s murder.
“While the world saw the horrors of racism in Emmett’s murder, the real consequences of hatred, what the world will never now see is remorse or responsibility for his death.”
Here’s what you need to know about Emmett Till.
Who was Emmett Till?
Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois.
He was the only child of Louis and Mamie Till, and never knew his father, who was a private in the United States Army during World War II.
Ms Till was a single mother, and worked long hours for the Air Force as a clerk in charge of secret and confidential files.
His mother recalled: “Emmett had all the house responsibility. I mean, everything was really on his shoulders, and Emmett took it upon himself. He told me if I would work, and make the money, he would take care of everything else. He cleaned, and he cooked quite a bit. And he even took over the laundry.”
What happened to Emmett Till?
Emmett went on a trip to Money, Mississippi, with his uncle, Moses Wright.
On August 24, 1955, Emmett and a group of teenagers entered Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market to buy refreshments after a long day picking cotton in the hot afternoon sun.
Emmett bought bubblegum and bystanders later said he either whistled at, flirted with, or touched the hand of the store’s white female clerk (and wife of the owner) Carolyn Bryant Donham.
Her husband and brother-in-law kidnapped the boy at gunpoint, tortured him, and threw his body into the river, for flouting the state’s racist social codes.
His body was shipped to Chicago and his mother decided to have an open-casket funeral, with Emmett’s body on display for five days so all could see the evidence of such a horrific hate crime.
Emmett’s burial, and the subsequent murder and kidnapping trial of Roy Bryant and J W Milam, was covered by two Black publications, Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender.
Graphic images of Emmett’s corpse were published and, by the time the trial started on September 19, his murder was a source of outrage throughout the nation.
At the time, black citizens were barred from serving jury duty, so the two men appeared before an all-white, all-male jury.
Emmett’s uncle Mr Wright went to the stand and identified Byrant and Milam as his kidnappers and killers— putting his own life in danger to do so.
Yet despite the overwhelming evidence, on September 23, the panel acquitted the two men of all charges, with deliberations lasting just 67 minutes.
Several months later, in January 1956, Byrant and Milam confessed to committing the crime, in an article for Look magazine which paid them $4,000 (£3,226).
But they could not be retried under US law at the time (double jeopardy), and both are now dead.
Emmett’s death went on to act as a catalyst for the American civil rights movement.
Who accused Emmett Till?
Carolyn Bryant Donham accused the 14-year-old of making improper advances towards her, which ultimately led to his murder by her husband and his half-brother.
More than 50 years after the murder, she admitted that Emmett hadn’t grabbed her.
Speaking to historian Timothy B Tyson, who was writing a book about the case, she said: “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.”
The revelations weren’t made public until 2017, when the book was released.
In 2022, an arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham was found in the files of a Mississippi courthouse basement — but she died in 2023.
President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which makes lynching, kidnapping, and similar acts a federal hate crime.
