Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False
For six decades, she
has been the silent woman linked to one of the most notorious crimes in the
nation’s history, the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, keeping
her thoughts and memories to herself as millions of strangers idealized or
vilified her. But all these years
later, a historian says that the woman has broken her silence, and acknowledged
that the most incendiary parts of the story she and others told about Emmett —
claims that seem tame today but were more than enough to get a black person
killed in Jim Crow-era Mississippi — were false.
The woman, Carolyn
Bryant Donham, spoke to Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University professor —
possibly the only interview she has given to a historian or journalist since
shortly after the episode — who has
written a book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” to be published next week. In it, he wrote that
she said of her long-ago allegations that Emmett grabbed her and was menacing
and sexually crude toward her, “that part is not true.” The revelations were
first reported on Friday by
Vanity Fair.
As a matter of narrow
justice, it makes little difference; true or not, her claims did not justify
any serious penalty, much less death.
The two white men who
were accused of murdering Emmett in 1955 — and later admitted it in a Look
Magazine interview — were acquitted that year by an all-white, all-male jury,
and so could not be retried. They and others
suspected of involvement in the killing died long ago.
Emmett Till was 14
when he was killed in 1955. AP
But among thousands of
lynchings of black people, this one looms large in the country’s tortured
racial history, taught in history classes to schoolchildren, and often cited as
one of the catalysts for the civil rights movement. Photographs in Jet
Magazine of Emmett’s gruesomely mutilated body — at a funeral that his mother
insisted have an open coffin, to show the world what his killers had done — had
a galvanizing effect on black America.
The case has refused
to fade, revived in a long list of writings and works of art, including,
recently, “Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File,” a book that unearths
the case of Emmett’s father, a soldier who was executed by the Army on
charges of murder and rape. The
Justice Department began an investigation into the Emmett Till
lynching in 2004, Emmett’s
body was exhumed for an autopsy, and the F.B.I. rediscovered the
long-missing trial transcript. But in 2007, a grand jury decided not to indict Ms.
Donham, or anyone else, as an accomplice in the murder.
“I was hoping that one
day she would admit it, so it matters to me that she did, and it gives me some
satisfaction,” said Wheeler Parker, 77, a cousin of Emmett’s who lives near
Chicago. “It’s important to people understanding how the word of a white person
against a black person was law, and a lot of black people lost their lives
because of it. It really speaks to history, it shows what black people went
through in those days.” Patrick Weems, project
coordinator at the Emmett Till
Interpretive Center, a museum in Sumner, Miss., said, “I think until you
break the silence, there is still that implied consent to the false narrative
set forth in 1955.” “It matters that she
recanted,” he added.
Emmett, who lived in
Chicago, was visiting relatives in Money, a tiny hamlet in the Mississippi
Delta region when, on Aug. 24, 1955, he went into a store owned by Roy and
Carolyn Bryant, a married couple, and had his fateful encounter with Ms.
Bryant, then 21. Emmett Till’s mother
at his funeral in 1955. She had insisted that the coffin be open, to show the
world what his killers had done. Four days later, he
was kidnapped from his uncle’s house, beaten and tortured beyond recognition,
and shot in the head. His body was tied with barbed wire to a cotton gin fan
and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. Roy Bryant and his
half brother, J. W. Milam, were arrested and charged with murder.
What happened in that
store is unclear, but it has usually been portrayed as an example of a black
boy from up North unwittingly defying the strict racial mores of the South at
the time. Witnesses said that Emmett wolf-whistled at Ms. Bryant, though even that
has been called into doubt. The news and stories
that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state),
delivered weekday mornings. Days after the arrest,
Ms. Bryant told her husband’s lawyer that Emmett had insulted her, but said
nothing about physical contact, Dr. Tyson said. Five decades later, she told
the F.B.I. that he had touched her hand.
But at the trial, she
testified — without the jury present — that Emmett had grabbed her hand, she
pulled away, and he followed her behind the counter, clasped her waist, and,
using vulgar language, told her that he had been with white women before. “She said that wasn’t
true, but that she honestly doesn’t remember exactly what did happen,” Dr.
Tyson said in an interview on Friday. Ms. Donham, now 82,
could not be reached for comment. Dr. Tyson said that in
2008, he got a call from Ms.
Donham’s daughter-in-law, who said they had liked
another book of his, and wanted to meet him.
It was in that meeting
that she spoke to him about the Till case, saying, “Nothing that boy did could
ever justify what happened to him.” Dr. Tyson said that
motivated him to write about the case.
Ms. Donham told him
that soon after the killing, her husband’s family hid her away, moving her from
place to place for days, to keep her from talking to law enforcement. She has said that Roy
Bryant, whom she later divorced, was physically abusive to her.
“The circumstances
under which she told the story were coercive,” Dr. Tyson said. “She’s horrified
by it. There’s clearly a great burden of guilt and sorrow. Devery S. Anderson,
author of a 2015
history, “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the
Civil Rights Movement,” said, “I’ve encountered so many people who want someone
be punished for the crime, to have anyone still breathing held responsible, and
at this point, that’s just her.”
But what matters now,
he said, is the truth. It has been clear for decades that she lied in court, he
said, “to get it from her own mouth after so many years of silence is
important.” For his part, Mr.
Parker, a pastor, said he harbors no ill will toward Ms. Donham, and hopes that
her admission brings her peace.
“I can’t hate,” he
said. “Hate destroys the hater, too. That’s a heavy burden to carry.”
