Emmett Till accuser received protection from police, she says in memoir

Recently emerged book sheds new light on lynching after grand jury declined to charge Carolyn Bryant Donham

By her own telling, Carolyn Bryant Donham received preferential treatment rather than prosecution by Mississippi authorities after her encounter with Emmett Till led to the lynching of the Black teenager in the summer of 1955.

Instead of arresting Donham on a warrant that accused her of kidnapping days after Till's abduction, an officer passed along word that relatives would take her and her two young sons away from home amid a rising furor over the case, Donham said in a 2008 memoir made public last month. The sheriff would later claim Donham, 21 at the time, could not be located for arrest.