Well, here's something you don't see every day:
Many will know of Emmett Till as the young black boy horrifically murdered by white racists in Mississippi; his two murderers were found not guilty of the crime, after which they proudly confessed to having done it.
So who's Carolyn Donham? At the time Carolyn Bryant, her interaction with Till was what catalyzed his murderers to go after him. She claimed, and later testified at trial, that Till had accosted her in her grocery store, effectively a death sentence for a black man in 1950s Mississippi.
Donham never faced any prosecution for her role in the fatal hysteria—but apparently she came close:
A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging a white woman in his 1955 kidnapping, and relatives of the victim want authorities to finally arrest her nearly 70 years later.
A warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — identified as "Mrs. Roy Bryant" on the document — was discovered last week by searchers inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill told The Associated Press on Wednesday. ...
Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. The arrest warrant against Donham was publicized at the time, but the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to "bother" the woman since she had two young children to care for.
Hard to know what to say about this.
On the one hand, 70 years is a long time. On the other hand, if you're complicit in the murder of a young child—to any degree—there's a fair case to be made that you should face justice for it no matter how long it's been (or how old you are).
According to The Daily Beast, the federal government has closed the Till case and wouldn't prosecute, but no statement has been given by Mississippi authorities.
Fourth Circuit District Court of Mississippi District Attorney Dewayne Richardson has not commented on the newly discovered arrest warrant. But the Department of Justice closed Till's case in December, saying no prosecution was possible. "No federal hate crime laws existed in 1955, and the statute of limitations has run on the only civil-rights statutes that were in effect at the time," a report from the department said.
Maybe a roving gang of angry activists isn't the best way to approach this, however. Just sayin.
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