What was the news? New evidence has been found in the horrific murder of Black teenager Emmett Till. A team searching the basement of a Mississippi courthouse discovered an arrest warrant from 1955 charging Carolyn Bryant Donham with kidnapping.
What is the background? Emmitt Till was a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago who was brutally killed in Mississippi, allegedly for whistling at a White woman. The two killers were arrested, tried and found not guilty by an all-White jury. The killers later admitted to the murder.
Who is named in the warrant? Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman at whom Till was accused of whistling. Donham is now in her 80s and living in North Carolina. There was evidence that Donham identified Till to his killers, thus the warrant. But the county sheriff said at the time he did not want to “bother” Donham, as she had two children.
How was the warrant found? The warrant was found in a box with other papers from the 1950s in the records of Leflore County, Mississippi. Till’s relatives want Mississippi authorities to arrest Donham and charge her in connection with Till’s murder. District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose office would prosecute a case, declined comment on the warrant but cited a December report about the Till case from the Justice Department, which said no prosecution was possible.
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