THE FAILURE to prosecute the accuser of Emmett Till, who was lynched following a lie by a woman 63 years ago, has been contrasted with the prosecution of Nazi war criminals long after the end of World War 2.
Racial justice campaigner and NAACP Springfield Massachusetts President, Bishop Talbert Swan, told The Voice that the fact Carolyn Donham was allowed to live her life without ever facing the consequences of what she did was a national disgrace.
He said: “America had a policy of extraditing elderly holocaust perpetrators back to Europe, so they could face justice, but it allowed Carolyn Donham, an elderly white woman, to live out her entire life without ever facing justice for her role in the murder of Emmett Till, and lying on the witness stand to protect his murderers.
“There seems to be a keen sense of what justice should mean when it comes to protecting the rights of white citizens in this nation, Germany, Ukraine, and other places around the globe.
“However, that altruistic notion seems to dissipate when it comes to punishing white folks for racist violence against Black bodies.
“For 68 years the blood of Emmett Till screamed from the grave for justice to be served. America failed to deliver.”
Donham’s identification of 14-year-old Emmett Till led to the brutal murder of the black teenager in 1955. She died , has died aged of cancer this week aged 88.
She falsely accused Till of flirting with her at her family’s grocery store in Money Mississippi, and subsequently identified the Black teen to his killers.
The two white supremacists who lynched and murdered Till were Roy Bryant, Donham’s then husband, and Roy Bryant’s half-brother J.W Milam.
The pair were acquitted of Till’s murder by an all-white jury but later confessed to the killing in a magazine interview.
While J.W Milam and Roy Bryant died many years ago, Donham faded from the public eye but was pictured last year for the first time in two decades.
The images of Donham living out her days, having never been held accountable for Till’s brutal murder led to renewed calls for her arrest, and drew comparisons with Nazi war criminals, hiding out after World War 2, but hauled into court rooms to finally face justice.
Compounding public outrage is the fact that also in 2022, it came to light that an unserved arrest warrant for Donham, issued at the time, had been left abandoned in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse for decades, and had never been executed.
Despite the surfacing of the warrant, the same county courthouse which had issued the arrest warrant for Donham decades earlier, declined to press charges citing insufficient evidence.
The decision was a slap in the face to the Till family and all those who had campaigned tirelessly for justice over the years.
Other campaigners have also highlighted the failure of several government administrations in holding Donham to account despite the strong case against her.
American civil rights activist Shaun King taking to Instagram said: “The Lyndon Johnson administration failed them. The Nixon administration failed them. The Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations failed them. Of course the 2nd Bush and Trump administration failed them.
“But I HAVE to say this… It particularly stung to have the Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations fail this family and do NOTHING. Each of those administrations came into power off of the strength of BLACK VOTES.”
Donham dying a free woman, having never been held responsible for her role in Till’s murder, is a further indictment of enduring systemic racism in the United States which fails to protect black communities, while allowing those implicated in white supremacist terror to live out their lives unpunished.
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In the United States prison industrial complex today, Justice in the Unites States remains heavily influenced by the skin-colour; wealth, and social class of the accused.
Ms Carolyn Donham’s false accusation against 14-year-old Emmitt Till, led directly to his savage death, at the hands of Ms Donham’s relatives.
Carolyn Donham should have been arrested and tried for her role in the death of Emmitt Till.
In an email to Law&Crime, Shabazz said the lawsuit remains active.
“The lawsuit is not dead,” he said. “Plaintiff will still seek redress from Sheriff Banks and Leflore County Prosecutors as to why Carolyn Bryant was never charged. We believe that a conspiracy has existed for nearly 70 years by Mississippi officials to protect Bryant’s criminal involvement in the murder of Emmett Till. Therefore, our complaint will be amended, and the struggle for justice in the Emmett Till case continues.”
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/white-woman-who-made-false-accusation-that-led-to-lynching-of-emmett-till-one-of-the-most-infamous-acts-of-racial-violence-dies-at-age-88/
Sad that even black people in 2023
Are afraid to comment about racism?
We keep waiting for evil white supremacy and her followers to die as our reparations. Sad no check can replace what has been lost but checks are the reparations owed not apologies or just incarceration of our killers (“whites”).