The white woman at the center of the Emmett Till case has admitted she lied in the case that led to the murder decades ago of the 14-year-old black boy, according to a new book.

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” Carolyn Bryant Donham is quoted as saying in “The Blood of Emmett Till” by Timothy Tyson.

Till was kidnapped, beaten, shot and tossed into the muddy Tallahatchie River in August 1955, four days after he allegedly whistled at Bryant, the then-wife of a white Mississippi shopkeeper.

The woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Miliam, were charged with murdering Till, whose mutilated body was found in the river.

Till’s mother insisted on holding an open-casket funeral. Images of the teen’s disfigured face rocketed across the country, sparking the Civil Rights movement.

At trial, Carolyn Bryant delivered the most explosive testimony, claiming Till had grabbed and threatened her inside her husband’s store. She said Till used an “unprintable” word as he told her he had been intimate “with white women before.”

“I was just scared to death,” the woman added on the stand in testimony that was never heard by the jury because the judge decided it wasn’t relevant to the murder.

Despite mountains of evidence, Roy Bryant and Miliam were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Carolyn Bryant went into hiding in the years after the trial. She divorced, and twice remarried, all the while never giving an interview.

That changed in 2007 when she agreed to speak with Tyson. The then-72-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted she had fabricated her trial testimony about Till making verbal and physical advances toward her.

“That part’s not true,” she says in Tyson’s book, according to Vanity Fair.

Donham added that she couldn’t remember the rest of what happened in the country store the night Till came in.

But she did say she “felt tender sorrow” for Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003.

Till’s murder investigation was reopened the next year. But a grand jury declined to indict Donham, whose voice was overheard by some witnesses at the scene of the abduction.

Now 82, Donham’s whereabouts are reportedly unknown.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national...ticle-1.2957336

SMH

How often has this happened?

A ton.

Yea, terrible.

Things were bad back in the 50's as Black and White were segregated in everything from schools to bathrooms to the part of town people lived in.
Whites feared Blacks and oppressed them. All White juries were the norm.
There was very little justice for a Black man back then.

We have come a long way, in many ways, since then but we are not there yet.

I think it's easy for me to say this, but what made people think this behavior was "okay" back then? I mean, when does being a human kick in and override how you were raised?

Even once is too many.

Everything was segregated back then and Whites did not see Blacks as equals, that is what made this behavior possible. A Black man crossing the line by whistling at a White woman was as good as rape. White Juries saw it that way too.

Today this is unthinkable as we are all equal Human Beings, back then we were not. We were separate. Later we were separate but equal so Blacks could ride the same bus as Whites, only in the back. It was a whole different world back then and to judge people of the past with our knowledge from today will never make sense.

It is like us trying to imagine what could possess people to think it was ok to own other people. It does not compute today, but it did in their time.

This, and these types of stories, are sickening. What could possibly move people to act this way? I can't fathom it, and I guess that's a good thing. It's nothing but hatred and cruelty.

People are no damn good.

Simply. They viewed them as sub-human. Despite them looking alike, white people didn't think that people of color were as cultured as them or could assimilate into their culture. White people alienated them, distanced themselves from them, as they thought they were extremely violent. Look at the rhetoric around the middle East and you'll find equally horrible and incriminating remarks about both races. History really does repeat itself.

Well, people should not judge those from the past by today's standards because those folks thought they were right in their thinking and it was all seen as socially acceptable at the time.

Just like 150 years from today when the people look back at us and judge the evil of those who supported Abortion while seeing those of us who fought it
as the Abolitionists.

So, someone is wanting to bring up the behavior of Democrats from 62 years ago? Congrats. If you take a good critical look at a lot of them, little has changed.

This is like To Kill a Mockingbird in real life. Bad enough this poor fellow was targeted for whistling at someone, but then for this lady to make this stuff up on top of it.

And then these weirdo's get off for it.

Glad I was born after this kind of thinking was so prevalent, (or at least born where it wasn't so prevalent).

Yep. They rebranded themselves as Republicans, but they're still the hateful creatures we remember as.

Nobody believes you. Tell me what kind of opportunities the left has genuinely created for real advancement for their lower class voting block since the war on poverty began.

They don't help them. They just give them enough government assistance to keep them from having to get a job and on welfare so they keep voting for them.

Yep, this is why you see black conservatives urging their fellow Americans of African descent to leave the democrat plantation.

Burgess Owens

Glenn Beck has had this gentleman on several times. Why people like him, Dr. Walter E. Williams and Dr. Thomas Sowell aren't paid more attention to I don't know.

What? You can't not believe a fact. Whether you like it or not, southern democrats switched parties after Democrats passed the civil Rights act.

I wasn't aware "the left" won any elections. Could you tell me which ones the left won and which one the Democrats won? They are very different after all. Many Democrats wouldn't be associated with the left, if it wasn't for them being American (Which has a poorer understanding of these concepts).

But in an attempt to answer your question: Allowing millions of people to have health insurance is extremely helpful to people in poverty. Although it still is not UHC. Thus still not a left policy, but a centric policy.

What have Conservatives done for those in poverty? Besides pushing them further into poverty.

Probably because people don't like being lied to.

People in poverty are on medicaid to begin with. They didnt need Obamacare.

You're not supposed to bring facts in to the arguement.


Geesh, Eve. Come on, Girl.

I rarely react and comment on this board. Also, I condemn the Emmett Till atrocity.

But, why are you dredging this subject up? I wrote to the paper and asked the same question just now. The relevancy of this particular article is invalid as a contemporary standalone. Why not contrast the 'black experience in this country' with the story of James Byrd, Jr. wherein the perpetrators were caught and punished. A seemingly improved 'southern' response to injustice.