Emmett Till

Carolyn Bryant Donham made the allegations that led to Till's lynching in Mississippi.

But Teri Watts said the Till family believes the warrant accusing Donham of kidnapping amounts to new evidence. If the warrant can still be served, Banks said, he would have to talk to law enforcement officers in the state where Donham resides. Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him.

An unserved arrest warrant in the lynching case of Black teenager Emmett Till nearly 70 years ago was found in a Mississippi courthouse.

- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS). In a 2017 book by Timothy Tyson, Donham said the allegations were false. She later disputed the claim and recanted her story, according to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Till was 14 years old and was visiting family from Chicago when he whistled at Donham inside the store where she was working. The original warrant is for Carolyn Bryant Donham and is dated Aug. 29, 1955.

Their resolve and diligence was recently rewarded when they were able to find a warrant issued 67 years ago for the arrest of Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam, Bryant's ...

The only purpose for bringing Emmett Till to the store, or for her being with the kidnappers, would have been for her to identify him. She admitted to her attorneys that Till was brought to the store, she admitted to the FBI that Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam and Elmer Kimbell brought him to the store. “It also underscores the failure of the law enforcement agencies to do what they should have been doing.” She was perturbed that even after the family presented a copy of the warrant and a letter to District Attorney DeWayne Richardson and the Department of Justice, “They have not given us the courtesy of a response. “That lay people were able to find the warrant in the archives of the Leflore County Courthouse is a testament of their determination to keep this case alive,” said Hill, who at the request of Beauchamp was retained by the late Simeon Wright to represent the family. But Watts, Till’s cousin and a co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation; Hill, counsel to the family, and Beauchamp, a filmmaker and documentarian, have kept a foot in the door, and they refuse to accept the DOJ’s decision to close the case. “After receiving no updates, we launched the Justice for Emmett Till campaign in 2020 to request charges be brought against the only known living accomplice, Carolyn Bryant-Donham.”

A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging a ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

The family of Emmet Till -- a 14-year-old Black boy who was abducted, tortured and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 -- are calling for the arrest of his white ...

Till posthumously became a tragic icon of the movement. The Leflore County sheriff had told reporters that he didn’t want to “bother” the woman since she was the mother of two young children. Such an interaction violated the racist code of behavior in the Jim Crow-era South.

The document charges the woman whose accusations led to the Black teenager's murder with his kidnapping. The warrant was never served — and she is still ...

Ms. Donham later testified that she went to get a pistol, and one of Emmett’s cousins, who was with him, said Emmett then whistled at Ms. Donham. Emmett, the cousin and a friend quickly left. Weeks later, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala., another seminal moment in the civil rights movement. He was joined by Melissa Earnest, a criminal justice student; Deborah Watts, a cousin of Emmett’s who leads the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation; Ms. Watts’s daughter Teri; and the Till family’s lawyer, Jaribu Hill. He was an only child, nicknamed Bobo, and lived with his mother and other relatives in a middle-class Black neighborhood. Efforts to revive the case by the Justice Department foundered in 2007 and again last year, when federal officials said there was not enough evidence to pursue charges. Days later, Mr. Bryant and Mr. Milam responded by abducting Emmett from bed at his relatives’ home at night. Ms. Donham was married to Roy Bryant at the time of the killing. “Why would you rely on a 67-year-old warrant if you think you have the cause today to justify it?” Mr. Bryant and his half brother J. W. Milam murdered Emmett days after the teenager was said to have whistled at Ms. Donham during an encounter at the couple’s store. The warrant was never served — and she is still alive. The current clerk of the Leflore County Circuit Court, Elmus Stockstill, certified its authenticity. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Mississippi, a team searching a courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging ...

Chad Meredith: “Not every patient fully understands the nature and consequences of the abortion procedure. Not every patient understands the development of the fetus and the stage at which the fetus is and the extent to which it is developed.” The last thing we need is another extremist on the bench.”

Carolyn Bryant Donham, who is White, had accused the 14-year-old Till of making improper advances at a family store in Money, Miss., in August 1955 — an ...

Her statement directly contradicted her testimony decades before, when she told a jury that Till had grabbed her waist and said crude things to her. Till’s uncle “led the men throughout his home with flashlights until they found Emmett in a bed, sleeping,” according to the PBS report. “This is what the state of Mississippi needs to go ahead.” You really could go in front of a judge today or tomorrow and get a new arrest warrant if you think, in fact, there is probable cause and suspicion for a crime,” Rychlak said. Although Leflore County District Attorney Joyce Chiles (D) brought the case against Donham before a grand jury in 2007, she declined to indict her for the murder of Till. No one was ever convicted of Till’s slaying. According to accounts, Till allegedly whistled at Donham, then Carolyn Bryant, who worked at the store. “The warrant doesn’t really give us new substantive evidence of her role in this crime, but it does indicate she was a suspect at one time and that a judge determined probable cause to arrest her at one time.” Milam and Bryant are now both dead, but Till’s family and supporters have maintained that Donham should be arrested. Since police never served the warrant, it is possible for law enforcement to still seek her arrest. Donham was married to Roy Bryant, one of the two White men who were acquitted weeks after Till was abducted from a relative’s home, lynched and tossed into a river. The Justice Department announced last December that it had ended its investigation into Till’s lynching. While the documents are sorted by decades, it’s unclear where the warrant, dated Aug. 29, 1955, was located for all these years.

A search group comprised of Till's family members found the warrant charging Carolyn Bryant Donham of kidnapping.

As a law professor at the University of Mississippi, Ronald J. Rychlak points out that arrest warrants can “go stale” due to time and changing circumstances. If the warrant can still be served, Banks said, he would have to talk to law enforcement officers in the state where Donham resides. The Associated Press reports Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill said the group discovered the warrant last week inside a file folder that had been placed in a box.