Key takeaways:
- Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman who accused Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in 1955, has passed away in hospice care.
- Donham’s accusation of Till’s improper advances and his subsequent lynching sparked a national outcry and helped to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.
- The Department of Justice has reopened Till’s case and is investigating it as a possible hate crime, though no updates have been released since Donham’s death.
Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, has passed away in hospice care in Louisiana. According to a death report filed Thursday in the Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office, Donham died Tuesday night in Westlake, Louisiana.
Till’s kidnapping and killing became a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement when his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in their hometown of Chicago after his brutalized body was pulled from a river in Mississippi. Till had traveled from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi in August 1955.
Donham’s accusation of Till’s improper advances and his subsequent lynching sparked a national outcry and helped to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. In 2017, Donham admitted in an interview that her accusations against Till were false.
Till’s case has been reopened by the Department of Justice in recent years, and the department has been investigating the case as a possible hate crime. The department has not released any updates on the investigation since Donham’s death.
Till’s death has been remembered as a tragic event in American history and a reminder of the racial injustice that still exists in the country today. Donham’s death marks the end of a chapter in this story, and the hope is that justice will be served in the case of Emmett Till.
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