“The tragic thing is that she was never held accountable,” writes Malik Shabazz from the organization Black Lawyers for Justice in a statement according to CNN.
Exactly what happened at Bryant’s grocery store in the village of Money that Wednesday in August is unclear. A cousin of Emmett Till says all he did was whistle at the 21-year-old woman, while she claims he also grabbed her by the waist and made sexual innuendos. It is quite possible that she was exaggerating; At least that is claimed in a book published this year.
Shot and thrown into the river
What happened four days later is all the more certain. A gang led by the 21-year-old’s husband Roy Bryant kidnapped Till, beat him, shot him in the head and dumped him in the Tallahatchie River.
Before the funeral, his mother decided to show his deformed face to the world in an open coffin.
Bryant and his half-brother were indicted but acquitted by an all-white jury. A few months later, they told in detail what happened in a paid interview for Look magazine. Since they had already been acquitted, they could not be charged again.
Several investigations
However, several attempts have been made to hold Carolyn Bryant Donham accountable over the past 20 years.
The Department of Justice has investigated her role in two rounds, most recently after the publication of historian Timothy B Tyson’s book “The Blood of Emmett Till” in 2017 in which he writes that she told him she lied during the murder trial. However, the investigators found no support for the task and discontinued the work in 2021.
Last year, a jury in Mississippi decided not to bring charges of kidnapping or murder, citing a lack of sufficient evidence.
According to The New York Times there is information that she intended to keep the matter quiet for her husband, but that she later contributed to the boy’s death by identifying him.