Carolyn Bryant Donham, the White woman whose allegations of a sexual advance led to the 1955 kidnapping and lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till, has died.
The Calcasieu Parish coroner’s office confirmed Donham’s death to Fox News. She was 88. Mississippi Today reported that Donham was receiving end-of-life hospice care in Louisiana as she battled cancer.
Till’s abduction and shocking death was a flashpoint for the civil rights movement in America. The boy’s mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago after his brutalized and bloated body was pulled from a river in Mississippi. It had been tied down with a cotton gin. Photographs published in Jet magazine sparked national outcry, and Till’s story is taught in schools to this day.
In the summer of 1955, 14-year-old Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives. On the evening of Aug. 24, he encountered Donham, who was 21 and went by Carolyn Bryant, at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Witnesses said that Till wolf-whistled at Donham.
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After their acquittal in the Emmett Till trial, defendant Roy Bryant, right, smokes a cigar as his wife happily embraces him and his half brother, J.W. Milam and his wife show jubilation. A jury cleared Bryant and Milam of having murdered Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy. Not long after the trial, the pair admitted to murdering Till in an interview with a reporter, showing no remorse. (Getty Images)
Days later, in the early morning hours of Aug. 28, Till was abducted from his family’s home, never to be seen alive again. Evidence indicates that a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to her then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, who killed the teenager.
Bryant and Milam were tried for Till’s murder and acquitted by an all-White jury. Months later, the men confessed to beating Till and shooting him to death in a paid interview with Look magazine.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CLOSES ITS INVESTIGATION INTO 1955 KILLING OF EMMETT TILL
Emmett Till is shown lying on his bed. (Getty Images)
The killing was reported internationally and helped catalyze the civil rights movement. Till’s death inspired Rosa Parks to refuse to give up her seat to a White man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Donham had long maintained her innocence in Till’s death, claiming in an unpublished memoir reported by The Associated Press in 2022 that she was unaware of what would happen to Till.
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In this file combo photo, John W. Milam, 35, left, his half-brother Roy Bryant, 24, center, and Bryant’s wife Carolyn, are seen. (AP)
The contents of the 99-page manuscript, titled “I am More Than A Wolf Whistle,” were first reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Historian and author Timothy Tyson of Durham, who said he obtained a copy from Donham while interviewing her in 2008, provided a copy to the AP.
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Tyson had placed the manuscript in an archive at the University of North Carolina with the agreement that it not be made public for decades, though he said he gave it to the FBI during an investigation the agency concluded last year. He said he decided to make it public now following the recent discovery of an arrest warrant on kidnapping charges that was issued for Donham in 1955 but never served.
Fox News’ Mitch Picasso and The Associated Press contributed to this report.