The family of Emmett Till has found old evidence on his white female accuser, who was never brought to justice in the tragic case…
14-year-old Emmett Till was killed in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a woman, 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham, while she worked behind the counter of her family’s store.
And now, Till’s family has found an old warrant, which was discarded by police seventy years ago, for the arrest of Till’s white female accuser, whose account led to his barbaric murder.
Donham allegedly told her husband Roy Bryant about Till’s advances toward her, which outraged him, he then set out with his half-brother John William Milam to kill the boy. Donham identified Till to the killers, which is why police made a warrant for her arrest.
However, the warrant was never served. At the time, The Leflore County sheriff told reporters he never followed up with the woman as he didn’t want to “bother” Donham because she had children to care for at home, as per the Associated Press.
Till’s killers, Bryant and Milam, were tried and later acquitted of the appalling murder of Till, by an all-white jury, but confessed to killing the boy a year later in an interview.
At the time, it was revealed that the 2 men beat him, shot him, and finally threw his body into a river, where he was later retrieved and given an open-casket funeral by his mother, which was one of the main driving forces of the civil rights movement.
Now, seventy years on, Members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation were searching for documents that could help bring justice to Till in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse when they discovered the unserved warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham.
And they want the police to finally serve Donham, who is now eighty years old, the warrant. “Serve it and charge her,” Teri Watts told the Associated Press. She is the daughter of Deborah Watts, who is Till’s cousin.
The Till family believes that the discovery of the warrant can be classed as new evidence, which should be enough to serve Donham all these years later.
“This is what the state of Mississippi needs to go ahead,” Watts said.
We hope Emmett Till and his family get the justice they deserve.