BREAKING NEWS: Emmett Till’s cousin sues to force arrest of white woman, 88, who triggered his lynching

• Till’s cousin Patricia Sterling is suing the Leflore County sheriff to force arrest 
• In 1955, Carolyn Bryant Donham triggered Till’s lynching in Mississippi 
• She alleged he’d made advances against her – the young boy had whistled  

A cousin of Emmett Till is suing to try to make a Mississippi sheriff serve a 1955 arrest warrant on a white woman in the kidnapping that led to the brutal lynching of the black teenager.

The torture and killing of Till that summer in the Mississippi Delta became a catalyst for the civil rights movement after his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago and Jet magazine published photos of his mutilated body.

Last June, a team doing research at the courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi, found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham, listed on that document as ‘Mrs. Roy Bryant.’

DailyMail.com exclusively revealed that Donham, 88, is living in a small apartment community in Kentucky. She suffers from cancer, is legally blind, and is receiving end of life hospice care in the small apartment she shares with her son. 

Till’s cousin Patricia Sterling, 64, of Jackson, Mississippi, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the current Leflore County sheriff, Ricky Banks. 

A cousin of Emmett Till is suing to try to make a Mississippi sheriff serve a 1955 arrest warrant on Carolyn Bryant Donham, 88. DailyMail.com exclusively revealed that she is living in a small apartment in a Kentucky town

Donham (left) was 21 and then known as Carolyn Bryant, when she accused 14-year-old Emmett Till (right) of whistling at her and making verbal and physical advances during an encounter at her family store in Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955. Her allegations prompted her then-husband and brother-in-law to abduct and kill Till in one of the most barbaric lynchings in US history 

The suit seeks to compel Banks to serve the warrant on Carolyn Bryant, who has since remarried and is named Carolyn Bryant Donham. 

‘We are using the available means at our disposal to try to achieve justice on behalf of the Till family,’ Sterling’s attorney Trent Walker told The Associated Press on Friday.

The AP left a phone message for Banks on Friday, seeking comment. The sheriff did not immediately respond. Court records showed that the lawsuit had not been served by Friday. 

Till, who was 14, had traveled south from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi in August 1955. Donham accused him of making improper advances on her at a grocery store in the small community of Money. A cousin of Till who was there has said Till whistled at the woman, an act that flew in the face of Mississippi´s racist social codes of the era.

Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. The arrest warrant against Donham was publicized in 1955, but the Leflore County sheriff at the time told reporters that he did not want to ‘bother’ the woman since she was raising two young children.

Roy Bryant (far right) and half-brother, J.W. Milam (far left) were charged with murder but were ultimately acquitted by an all-white jury. A triumphant Bryant is seen smoking a cigar as Carolyn embraces him after being cleared. Milam died of bone cancer at 61 in 1981 and Bryant died in 1994 also from cancer

Emmett Till with his mother, Mamie Bradley in 1950. Till, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi during the summer of 1955 when he was brutally murdered 

Early last month, an unserved arrest warrant for Donham – pictured on the lawn of her husband’s defense attorney’s office in 1955 – was found in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse, prompting Till’s family and activists to mobilize and call for justice

Weeks after Till’s body was found in a river, her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were tried for murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. Months later, the men confessed in a paid interview with Look magazine.

Now in her late 80s, Donham has lived in North Carolina in recent years. She has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution.

The U.S. Justice Department announced in December 2021 that it had ended its latest investigation into the lynching of Till, without bringing charges against anyone.

After researchers found the arrest warrant last June, the office of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in July there was no new evidence to try to pursue a criminal case against Donham. In August, a district attorney said a Leflore County grand jury had declined to indict Donham.

Walker, the attorney for Till’s cousin, said Friday that the South has a history of cases of violence that were not brought to justice until decades later – including the 1963 assassination of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, for which white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith was convicted of murder in 1994.

‘But for Carolyn Bryant falsely claiming to her husband that Emmett Till assaulted her Emmett would not have been murdered,’ Sterling’s lawsuit says. ‘It was Carolyn Bryant’s lie that sent Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam into a rage, which resulted in the mutilation of Emmett Till’s body into (an) unrecognizable condition.’

Bradley insisted on having an open coffin funeral to show her son’s tortured and mutilated body and expose the horror of his lynching and the persecution of African Americans in the US during the Jim Crow era 

Friends restrain grief-stricken Mrs. Mamie Bradley (left) as her son’s body is lowered into the grave after a four-day, open casket funeral on September 5, 1955

Source: Read Full Article