The woman whose accusation against Emmett Till led to the lynching of the Black teenager in 1955 has died, authorities told Mississippi Today and CNN. Carolyn Bryant Donham was 88 years old.
Megan LeBoeuf, chief investigator for the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office in Louisiana, confirmed Donham’s death to the news outlets. She had cancer and was receiving end-of-life hospice care, according to Mississippi Today.
A death letter from the coroner’s office obtained by CNN showed Donham died Tuesday in Westlake, Louisiana.
Her death comes after a grand jury in Mississippi last year declined to indict Donham on charges related to Till’s kidnapping and death. Authorities said there was not enough evidence to support an indictment.
In 1955, Donham accused Till of touching her hand, grabbing her by the waist and making sexual advances toward her as he and others left the grocery store that she and her then-husband owned. Till, who lived in Chicago and traveled to Mississippi to visit family, had wolf-whistled at the then-21-year-old, according to the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation.
Four days later, Till was kidnapped, lynched, beaten and killed. His body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River, where it was found after three days.
Donham’s then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were acquitted of charges in Till’s death but later confessed in a magazine interview, The Associated Press reported.
In an unpublished memoir obtained last year by the AP, Donham claimed that she tried to help Till after her husband and Milam brought him to her for identification after they abducted him from a family home at gunpoint.
“I did not wish Emmett any harm and could not stop harm from coming to him, since I didn’t know what was planned for him,” she said in the 99-page manuscript, “I am More Than A Wolf Whistle,” according to the AP. “I tried to protect him by telling Roy that ‘He’s not the one. That’s not him. Please take him home.’”
She claimed that Till spoke up and identified himself.
Till’s death and the subsequent acquittal of Roy Bryant and Milam fueled the civil rights movement and prompted federal investigations.
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