Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman at the center of the Emmett Till lynching that took place nearly seven decades ago, has died. She was 88.
Megan LeBoeuf, chief investigator for the Calcasieu Parish coroner’s office, confirmed the woman’s death Thursday.
Mississippi Today reported that Donhan had been suffering from cancer and was receiving end-of-life hospice care.
The woman’s death comes after a Mississippi grand jury last year declined to indict her on charges related to Till’s kidnapping and death. They claimed there was not enough evidence to support an indictment.
In August 1955, a teenage Till had been visiting relatives in Mississippi from Chicago when he was beaten and shot to death after Donham accused him of whistling at her in a store. Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were acquitted by an all-white jury to only later confess to the crime in a magazine interview.
Till’s torture and killing fueled the civil rights movement after his mother decided to have an open-casket funeral and publish photos of his body in Jet Magazine.
Just last June, the woman’s name re-entered international headlines after a team doing research at the courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi, found an unserved warrant in Donham’s name dating back to 1955. In July, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office said there was no new evidence to pursue a case, and in August a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Donham.
