Voices: Why I can’t celebrate Carolyn Bryant Donham’s death
29.04.2023 - 01:01
/ msn.com
killing in a 1956 interview with Look magazine. At that trial, Donham described Till’s actions toward her as sexually aggressive. More than 50 years later, Donham confessed to Duke University historian Timothy B Tyson that she had perjured herself on the witness stand to make Emmett’s conduct sound more threatening than it actually was.
Tyson featured the interview in his book, The Blood of Emmett Till. In a statement after Donham’s death, Tyson said: “68 years ago, there was the unspeakable murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago. It has comforted America to see this as a story about monsters, her one of them.
But the truth is what was unspeakable was the American social order that did nothing about Emmett Till or thousands more like him. ”I saw a lot of celebration online about Carolyn Bryant Donham’s death. A few might find that crass, though many Black folks were clear that they felt they now had one less monster to worry about.
Last year, a team working on behalf of Till’s relatives searched the basement of a Mississippi courthouse for evidence about the lynching of a Black teenager. They found an unserved warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the document reportedly discovered inside a file folder.
Seventy years later, Till’s family members wanted it to be finally served. “Serve it and charge her,” Teri Watts told the Associated Press in an interview. When it was first revealed that she perjured herself years ago, there were calls for authorities to reopen the investigation.
The Department of Justice did so…twice: Once in 2007 and once in 2018. Each reopening resulted in no charges. Each time we were told that authorities could not prove Donham had
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