A black teenager from Chicago, Till’s kidnapping, torture and murder decades ago galvanized the US civil rights movement.
Relatives of Emmett Till, a black teenager whose 1955 lynching boosted the US civil rights movement, joined their supporters in calling on the authorities to reverse their decision to close an investigation into the murder.
Deborah Watts, Till’s cousin who heads the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, urged authorities Friday to bring to justice a woman who was at the center of the case from the beginning.
US authorities have known for decades that Carolyn Bryant Donham, now 80 and living in North Carolina, played a key role in Till’s murder, and they must act immediately, Watts said.
“Time is not on our side,” Watts, who lives in Minnesota, said during a news conference at the state Capitol.
The relatives said they would submit to Mississippi authorities a petition signed by some 250,000 people seeking a new investigation into the murder, which went on to show the depth of racial hatred in the South toward the world. Other petition campaigns continue.
Michelle Williams, chief of staff for Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, questioned the possibility of a new investigation. In a statement, she said the Justice Department had worked with the local district attorney’s office on a new examination that was completed in December.
“This is a tragic and horrific crime, but the FBI, which has far more resources than our office, has investigated this matter twice and determined there is nothing further to prosecute,” Williams said.
The Justice Department said in December that it was wrapping up its new investigation into the murder of Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who was kidnapped, tortured and killed after witnesses said he whistled at Donham, then known as Carolyn Bryant. . at a family store where she worked in rural Mississippi.
Federal officials had reopened the investigation after a 2017 book quoted Donham as saying she lied when she claimed Till approached her.
Family members publicly denied that Donham recanted his allegations, and Donham told the FBI that he had never changed his story, the Justice Department said.
The Justice Department said historian Timothy B Tyson, author of The Blood of Emmett Till, was unable to produce recordings or transcripts to corroborate his account that Donham allegedly admitted to lying about his encounter with the teenager.
The FBI investigation included a conversation with one of Till’s cousins, the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., who previously told the Associated Press in an interview that he heard Till whistle at the woman in a store in Money, but the black teen he did nothing to justify his death.
Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother JW Milam were tried on murder charges about a month after Till’s death, but were acquitted by an all-white jury in Mississippi. Months later, they confessed in a paid interview with Look magazine.
However, the Justice Department found that Bryant and Milam were not the only people involved, and estimates that the number of people who could have played a role in Till’s murder ranges from half a dozen to more than 14. Bryant died in 1994. and Milam passed away in 1980.
Earlier this week, Congress gave its final approval to legislation that for the first time make lynching a federal hate crime in the United States, sending the bill to President Joe Biden.
Years in the making, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is among some 200 bills that have been introduced over the last century that have tried to outlaw lynching in the US.
“Lynching is a long-standing uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has been used for decades to maintain the white hierarchy,” said Rep. Bobby Rush, a Democrat who championed the bill.