Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman behind the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi died Tuesday at the age of 88, a coroner confirmed to CNN.
Though accounts of her interaction with Till vary, Bryant Dunham is remembered as the store clerk who testified in 1955 that Till, who was visiting from Chicago, propositioned her in the small-town Mississippi store she ran with her husband, CNN reported. That interaction set off a deadly chain of events that shocked the world and helped fuel the civil rights movement in America.
Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman whose accusation led to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, has died at 88 https://t.co/rg5zK7bt1u
— CNN (@CNN) April 27, 2023
Days after visiting the store with his cousin, Till was reportedly taken from his bed in the middle of the night, beaten, shot in the head and thrown into the Tallahatchie River where his mutilated body was found three days later. Though Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and J,W. Milam were arrested for the murder of Till, they were acquitted by an all-white jury after less than an hour of deliberations, CNN reported. (RELATED: McCurtain County Commissioner Resigns Amid Investigation Into Alleged Lynching Discussion)
Bryant and Milam both confessed to the murder of Till in an interview in 1956, but were never held criminally responsible for the teen’s death. The case was revisited by the Department of Justice in 2007 after the deaths of both Bryant and Milam. The case was closed after a Mississippi grand jury declined to issue new charges, according to another report by CNN.
After an interviewer claimed Bryant Dunham admitted her trial testimony in 1955 which accused Till of propositioning her wasn’t true, another attempt to bring justice for the Till family was brought forth. After seven hours of testimony, a Leflore County grand jury ruled in 2022 there was “insufficient evidence to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham on charges of kidnapping and manslaughter,” according to a statement from District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, obtained by CNN.
Bryant Donham died on April 25 in Westlake, Louisiana, according to a fact of death letter from the coroner’s office obtained by CNN.