Woman Reveals Crucial Details About Harassment In 60-Year-Old Trial That Sparked Civil Rights Movement

The woman at the center of the Emmett Till murder case has spoken out for the first time, more than 60 years later, and what she reveals is a total bombshell. Carolyn Bryant Donham has admitted that part of her story about the black teenager is false.

Till’s brutal beating death in Mississippi in 1955, the acquittal of his professed killers by an all-white jury and the photos of his dead body sparked outrage outside the state—becoming a catalyst for the national civil rights movement.

According to authorities, the 14-year-old from Chicago was killed during a visit to Mississippi after Donham, a white woman then named Carolyn Bryant, reportedly accused him of grabbing her by the hand and wrist and acting lewdly at her shop.

Till was kidnapped days later from a relative’s home and then beaten and mutilated, before being shot, by Donham’s shop-owner husband at the time, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam.

Till’s body was sunk in the Tallahatchie River, where he was eventually found floating. After a highly publicized trial, Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till’s kidnapping and murder in September 1955 by an all-white, all-male jury. They only deliberated for an hour.

Donham testified at the trail and her allegations were entered into the record and shared with reporters by her attorneys, but they were not heard by the jury, who had been excused from the courtroom.

In January 1956, Bryant and Milam confessed to their guilt in Till’s death in a Look magazine article.

Donham avoided public attention for much of her life, ignoring journalists’ repeated requests. But she sat down with author and Duke University scholar Timothy B. Tyson 10 years ago for his new book, The Blood of Emmett Till.

Donham’s 2007 interview, when she was 72, is being published for the first time. Of her accusation that Till had physically and verbally harassed her, she told Tyson, according to Vanity Fair: “That part’s not true.”

“Honestly, I just don’t remember,” Donham said of her fateful meeting with Till, according to the Statesman. “It was 50 years ago. You tell these stories for so long that they seem true.” Donham’s allegation that Till whistled at her has also been disputed.

On the stand in 1955, however, Donham claimed Till had said something “unprintable” to her and she was “scared to death.”

Tyson said Donham, now 82, wrote her own memoir, More Than a Wolf Whistle, which is kept at the University of North Carolina but will not be available until the 2030s, at Donham’s request.

During their meeting, Tyson said Donham expressed feeling “tender sorrow” for Till’s mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley.

She said, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.”

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[H/T PEOPLE, Vanity Fair, Austin American-Statesman]