More On: Carolyn Bryant Donham
In an unpublished memoir, Carolyn Bryant Donham said she didn't want Emmett Till to die
In her unpublished memoir, the woman who was accused of setting off the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 said she didn't know him or want him dead.
Carolyn Bryant Donham even said that she was a victim like 14-year-old Emmett Till because of how her life changed after her husband and his half-brother killed Till.
The Associated Press got a copy of the book "I am More Than a Wolf Whistle" on Thursday. It is the most detailed account of what happened that has ever been written.
In the written account, Donham said she tried to help Till after her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother JW Milam brought him to her in the middle of the night for identification.
“I did not wish Emmett any harm and could not stop harm from coming to him, since I didn’t know what was planned for him,” Donham, who is white, argued in the manuscript written by her daughter-in-law. “I tried to protect him by telling Roy that ‘He’s not the one. That’s not him. Please take him home.’”
She claimed in the manuscript that Till actually identified himself after he was dragged from his family’s home at gunpoint.
“I have always prayed that God would bless Emmett’s family. I am truly sorry for the pain his family was caused,” she said.
She also said she “always felt like a victim as well as Emmett” and “paid dearly with an altered life.”
Even though Donham's husband and brother-in-law admitted to the murder after being found not guilty at trial, her alleged role in the case also got a lot of attention across the country.
A warrant for Donham's arrest for kidnapping was found in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. The warrant was from the 1980s.
When Donham was 21, she is said to have said that Till, who was visiting Mississippi from Chicago, made inappropriate moves toward her, like whistling, which was against the law in the Jim Crow South.
Then, it is said that she told her husband about the supposed meeting, which led to Till being taken, beaten, and killed two nights later.
Donham is 87 years old now, and the last place anyone knew she lived was in Raleigh, North Carolina. Last week, people who wanted Till to be arrested looked for her. They even went into a senior living center where they thought she might be.
Deborah Watts, who runs the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and is Till's cousin, said that the memoir is new proof that Donham had something to do with Till's death.
“I truly believe these developments cannot be ignored by the authorities in Mississippi,” she said.
In December, the US Department of Justice concluded its investigation into Donham, and Mississippi authorities have not said whether they want to press the abduction case against him.
Durham-based historian and writer Timothy Tyson claimed to have obtained a copy of Donham's memoir after speaking with him in 2008. He pledged to keep it hidden from the public for years, but when the long-lost arrest warrant surfaced, he made the decision to make it public at this time.
“The potential for an investigation was more important than the archival agreements, though those are important things,” Tyson said. “But this is probably the last chance for an indictment in this case.”
He said the claims made by Donham needed to be taken with “a good-sized shovel full of salt,” citing her assertion that Till told his eventual killers who he was.
“Two big white men with guns came and dragged him out of his aunt and great-uncle’s house at 2 o’clock in the morning in the Mississippi Delta in 1955. I do not believe for one minute that he identified himself,” Tyson said.
===========
