Carolyn Bryant has died at age 88.
In recent years, there were renewed calls for law enforcement officials to question her about her shifting and dubious accusations that led to the brutal murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955.
Justice delayed…
One less lying, racist coward in the world.
If this was the Pit I’d be much less kind.
Was this lady coerced or complicit in these accusations?
I have no desire to to defend this woman btw.
It sounds like she complained to her family, and her brother killed the guy.
Yup, that’s exactly what happened. Then she changed her story several times over the years. A warrant was issued for her arrest the day after Till was kidnapped and murdered but the local sheriff never bothered arresting her. When the warrant was rediscovered last year the local sheriff… still didn’t bother arresting her.
Till’s murderers were arrested, tried, found not guilty (shocker, that) and then gleefully told anyone who would listen – including reporters from Look magazine – exactly how they killed the kid.
Sick, vile people the lot of them.
Thanks for clearing that up.
It was actually Bryant’s husband and his half-brother that killed Till. Bryant told her husband that Till had grabbed her waist or wolf-whistled at her when he came into her store to buy some gum. (According to Till’s cousin who was with him at the store that day, he did in fact whistle at her.) But at the trial she testified that Till had grabbed her and made lewd comments to her. She later said – long after her husband and his brother had been acquitted – that her testimony was false, and that she couldn’t remember what had actually happened.
Screen capture from the first season of “America in Color” on the Smithsonian Channel:
Note the filename on mouseover.
We simply do not know the details. Some accounts say the woman did not tell her husband, but that a man who had been playing checkers on the porch of the store did in exchange for fifty cents in store credit. But there is no need to get hung up on details. We know there was a murder. We know who did it. We know they got away with it.