Emmett Till Accuser Carolyn Bryant Donham Dead at 88, Nearly 70 Years After the Teens Lynching
People reports, Carolyn Bryant Donham, the White woman who accused Black teen Emmett Till of making sexual advances toward her, ultimately leading to the teen’s brutal death, has died at 88. According to the Associated Press, Bryant Donham died Tuesday while in hospice care in Westlake, La. She reportedly had cancer at the time of her death.
Carolyn Bryant Donham was a 21-year-old shopkeeper in Money, Miss., who accused Emmett Till of propositioning her and lewdly grabbing her at her family's grocery store on Aug. 24, 1955. Originally from Chicago, Till was in the area visiting family. Several days after the accusations, Till was kidnapped in the middle of the night by Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and Bryan’ts half-brother J.W. Milam. He was beaten and lynched. His mutilated body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a metal fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.
In September of 1955, both men were tried for the murder of Emmett Till, but after an hour-long deliberation by an all-White and all-male jury, the pair were acquitted. When the two men were no longer facing legal jeopardy, they admitted to Look Magazine in 1956 that they were guilty of murder. Both men have since died.
Donham avoided public attention for much of her life until 2007. She sat down with author and Duke University scholar Timothy B. Tyson for his new book, The Blood of Emmett Till. According to Vanity Fair, of her accusation that Till had physically and verbally harassed her, she told Tyson, “That part’s not true.” The book was published in 2017, and in an interview that same year, Donham stood by those claims. In her 109-page unpublished memoir, I Am More Than A Wolf, obtained by The Associated Press in 2022, Donham reaffirmed her earlier allegations and claimed she tried to dissuade her husband from harming the teen.
In August 2022, citing insufficient evidence, a grand jury declined to indict Donham on kidnapping and manslaughter charges for her role in Till's death.
