More than 60 years after the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till, the woman who testified during his trial has admitted to perjury.
Two White men killed Till for allegedly whistling at a White woman in 1955 as he was visiting family in Mississippi.
The Root reports that a book titled The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy Tyson, a Duke University scholar, reveals that now 72-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted she made false claims during her testimony.
The two men responsible for killing Till, J.W. Milam and his half-brother Roy Bryant, were arrested after the murder. However, they were found not guilty after deliberation from an all-White, all-male jury.
During the trial, Vanity Fair reports that Donham testified Till “grabbed her and verbally threatened her” and that she was “just scared to death.”
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In Tyson’s book, which is scheduled to be published next week, he writes that Donham “felt tender sorrow,” and said “nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.”
Reports also state that she approached Tyson because she was writing her memoirs and claims she felt grief after she “herself lost one of her sons… she thought about the grief that Mamie must have felt and grieved all the more.”
Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett Till’s mother who insisted on an open casket during his funeral, died in 2003 after her decades-long fight for civil rights.