An author who has written what is considered the seminal book on the 1955 murder of Emmett Till has doubts that the U.S. Justice Department’s reopening of the case will lead to a criminal prosecution.
“I think this inquiry will be brief, unless the Department of Justice knows something the rest of us don’t know,” said Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder that Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.”
Another author’s work, Timothy Tyson’s 2017 book “The Blood of Emmett Till,” is believed to have spurred federal investigators to reopen the case they closed a decade earlier.
In the book, Carolyn Bryant Donham, now 83 years old and living in North Carolina, tells Tyson she lied to law enforcement and in testimony about the white shopkeeper’s interaction with the 14-year-old black boy from Chicago at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money.
Donham testified in 1955 that Till grabbed her and made sexual advances toward her on the day he came into the store. Many years later, she told Tyson that claim was not true.
Her encounter with Till, in which he whistled at her in the parking lot of the store, led to Till’s abduction, torture and murder by Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam.
They were acquitted of the slaying by an all-white, all-male jury in Tallahatchie County, but they subsequently admitted their guilt in a paid interview with Look magazine.
Till’s death, one of the most infamous race-based killings in U.S. history, is credited with being a major catalyst to the civil rights movement.
New attention to the case surfaced last week when it was reported that the Justice Department had quietly reopened its investigation months ago. The Justice Department said the renewed inquiry, presented in a report to Congress in late March, is “based upon the discovery of new information.”
Though it is not clear what that information is, most speculation surrounds Donham’s recanting of her earlier accusations, which has raised questions of whether she should be reconsidered for possible criminal charges.
A racially balanced Leflore County grand jury found in 2007 that there was not sufficient evidence to indict Donham for murder, manslaughter or kidnapping.
It is not clear whether that grand jury heard the same false claims against Till that Donham later denied.
Jurors all agreed, however, that the prosecution, led by then-Assistant District Attorney Joyce Chiles, was unable to establish that Donham was with the killers the night of the kidnapping and killing.
Greg Watkins, 38 at that time, was one of the 19 grand jurors. He told the Commonwealth in 2007: “There is nobody left to indict. It will be debated forever probably, but there is no one left living to send to jail.
“(Donham) didn’t murder Till. That’s understood. And they couldn’t prove that she was even there the night Till was kidnapped.”
Anderson said that if the Justice Department actually has any new information that could lead to criminal prosecution, it would have to be something beyond Donham’s confession.
“I don’t know if they found out additional information or if it’s just Carolyn Donham’s admission that what she said wasn’t true,” Anderson said. “The case has never been officially closed. I think it has just gone from inactive to active status.”
Anderson said there has been a lot of misconception around what Donham said to Tyson in the book.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say that her claiming Emmett grabbed her led to his death,” he said. “But she didn’t make that claim until after he was dead.”
Anderson said that, according to his research, Donham did not make the claim of being grabbed by Till to any attorneys prior to the trial and instead claimed that he came into the store, said, “How about a date?,” was rushed out of the store by one of his cousins and whistled at her in the parking lot.
When Donham made her false claim on the stand to help the defense, jurors were not present and the presiding judge ruled her testimony inadmissible.
“She had hidden her encounter with Till from her husband,” Anderson said. “He found out from someone else who was there. It seems clear that her lie did not lead to Emmett’s death.”
When the Till case was initially reopened for investigation by the FBI in 2004, Donham did not tell the FBI what she later told Tyson. Instead, she repeated to FBI agent Dale Killinger the same story she’d told in court a half-century earlier, saying “as soon as he touched me, I started screaming.”
Lying to an FBI agent is a punishable crime, but as with perjury, it has a statute of limitations that has long passed. Donham cannot be prosecuted for either of those alleged offenses.
Donham has written a memoir, “More Than a Wolf Whistle: The Memoir of Carolyn Bryant Donham,” that won’t be available for public inspection until 2036 or until she dies under an agreement with the University of North Carolina archives.
Anderson said he thinks authorities possibly are interested in unearthing the memoir by subpoena, to retrieve her actual account of what happened.
“What I think they probably want is for her statement to be part of the official record, not just a statement in a book,” Anderson said.
Meanwhile, Timothy Tyson, the author who reportedly prompted the Justice Department’s renewed interest in the case, has responded with skepticism about the federal agency’s motives.
He told The Washington Post he believed the reopening of the investigation was not an attempt to right a wrong but a political show to distract attention away from the department’s activities separating immigrant children from their families in recent weeks.
“I think this is utterly hypocritical,” he said. “And I find it deeply ironic and appalling, really, that enemies of civil rights would try to use this dead child’s memory as a shield for their vicious, white nationalist policies.”
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
