Carolyn Bryant Donham was named nearly 67 years ago in a warrant that accused her in Emmett Till's abduction, even before his body was found in a river, FBI records show, yet she was never arrested or brought to trial in a case that shocked the world.
Stymied in their calls for a renewed investigation into the killing of Emmett Till, relatives and activists are advocating another possible path toward accountability in Mississippi: They want authorities to launch a kidnapping prosecution against the woman who set off the lynching by accusing the Black Chicago teen of improper advances in 1955.
“This warrant is a stepping stone toward that,” she said. “Because warrants do not expire, we want to see that warrant served on her.” Now in her late 80s and most recently living in Raleigh, North Carolina, Donham has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution. She did not seem to know she had been named in an arrest warrant in Till's abduction until decades later, said Dale Killinger, a retired FBI agent who questioned her more than 15 years ago.
“If we’re saying we are a country of truth and justice, we must get truth and justice … no matter the age or gender of the person involved,'" said Beauchamp.have varied through the years, but the woman known at the time as Carolyn Bryant was always at the center of it, said author Devery Anderson, who obtained original FBI files on the case while researching his 2015 book “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.