*Graphic Image* to ask what you think about the Carolyn Bryant Donham case?

[MiriMollyMartha]

Have you seen this in the news? I have been reading about it and was wondering what the MN hive mind thought.

I'm sure you've all heard this awful story, but incase you haven't, Carolyn Bryant Donham was a white woman who, aged 22, was whistled at (and apparently also grabbed) by a 14 year old African American boy named Emmett Till in a store in Mississippi in 1955. (In her own memoir, she claims she called for help but there were apparently no witnesses in the store who heard her call.)

Emmett Till was kidnapped at gunpoint from his bed by the woman's husband and brother in law, who tortured and murdered Till before dumping his body in a river. It's a truly heartbreaking and just hideous story. The story is that witnesses heard a woman's voice (supposedly Carolyn's) identifying Emmett, saying, "That's him" from a car before he was taken away and killed.

The two men were acquitted of murder, but admitted to the killing in a paid interview later, as they couldn't be prosecuted having been found innocent already.

Carolyn Bryant Donham is now around 88 years old. Her whereabouts are unknown. The story seems to be a little hazy, with popular opinion being that Carolyn later admitted that Emmett never touched her (as this was claimed by a biographer of hers), although this is denied by both Carolyn and also the FBI who said that this was never admitted. Carolyn, in her own autobiography, stands by her story and the FBI have said that she never changed her story.

In Carolyn's autobiography, she claims to have had no idea what her husband and brother in law planned to do Emmett. She says she told them they'd got the wrong boy in an attempt to make them take him home. She says she feels like a victim too, in a way, because her life was changed forever by what happened. She says that she'd prayed every day for Emmett's family.

Family of Emmett Till and other campaigners have since discovered a 67 year old arrest warrant for Carolyn that was never served. They are now trying to find her to serve it to her, and are demanding that the police take action.

Protestors recently stormed a retirement home in large numbers trying to find Carolyn to serve her the arrest warrant. They are searching for her still, but apparently can't find her. Carolyn's family have remained silent, but a friend of the family has said that she's in very ill health, blind, and even if the papers were served to her, she'd be dead before it went to trial.

My question is - how do you feel about this? On the one hand, I understand the desire for justice to be served. This case is absolutely heartbreaking and disgusting. On the other hand, it reminds me a little of the arresting of guards in their 90s, who had worked at concentration camps during World War 2. While a few top Nazis were executed or imprisoned after the war, a number of people who did far more hideous things were free to live normal lives, like the many Nazi scientists, engineers and technicians who were given government jobs in the USA after the war due to their skill and knowledge. Many years later, when people were hungry for justice, they went after the only living people left. It's like needing SOMEONE to be punished because this thing is too hideous to go unpunished. It's almost unbearable for it to go unpunished. But the actual perpetrators aren't around anymore to be punished.

I also wonder whether, even if Carolyn did point out Emmett, she has actually committed a crime if she claims that she had no idea what her husband and brother in law planned to do? I'm not sure about American law but I don't know what that crime would be. I also wonder whether it would actually be justice for her to be punished while his actual killers lived normal lives and died peacefully without ever facing punishment. Would it really be justice or would it just be 'an eye for an eye' - like, SOMEONE has to pay for this.

What do you think?

If you don't understand why there might be a trigger warning on this thread then possibly it's not to protect you. As a black woman I can completely understand why a thread discussing this and the images carry a trigger warning; those who are white will never understand how draining and mentally demanding it is to see things like this whilst living under the cloud of systematic and overt racism still.

Personally I think both men and she should have been charged, but as justice was in no way served I don't see the value of pursuing the woman of whom we will never know the intentions of for sure (even though we can all guess and I'd wager its accurate) whilst the 2 men who physically did this got off scot free.

In terms of the Holocaust, the fact that "worse" perpetrators escaped justice is no reason not to pursue and prosecute "less worse" perpetrators. How do you even define that, when in virtually ever case, you are talking about mass murder?

The Emmett Till case is beyond words. I have never believed that a black boy living in 1955 Mississippi would put hands on a white woman, he would know only too well what would happen. I'm very dubious of the "whistle", although there may be another explanation for that, as described by a PP.

There is a true version of this story that will sadly never be told and although Carolyn Donham is almost certainly too ill to charge now, I doubt she is without some responsibility. How much is my question.

Yes, too little too late. And getting justice for extended family is nowhere near the same as getting family for his poor mother who has already passed away. I can't bear the thought of that poor woman living with that for so long and never seeing justice.

Thank you - you described far better than I did why a trigger warning was needed

Having a trigger warning doesn’t mean hiding from it. It just means people know what they’re going to be looking at in advance- some people might choose
not to look, for various reasons. Others might just want to prepare themselves first. I don’t see why there’s anything controversial about giving people that option- the image has not been censored, people have just been alerted to its presence.

Actually, the second half of your post has answered exactly what I was asking, so thank you for that, too! I think this also sums up my feelings. ALL should have been punished, but as the main (definitely guilty, 100% evil, 100% did what they did deliberately) perpetrators got off totally free, it's NOT really justice to punish the woman whose intentions are questionable (of course she was PROBABLY terrible, but we can never be positive of that like with the others, and she isn't the killer, as awful as she is). So that's what i was asking. Not 'should she be punished' (to which the answer is of course yes) but legally CAN she be punished (it seems probably not) and also, will justice be served/will it bring any peace to this case if she is. Which again, it seems that the answer is no.

I feel that some of the posters have misunderstood this and thought I'm supporting her in some way. I'm really not! Bloody hell. How could anyone? I'm just trying to understand and comprehend something which is so awful that it's beyond understanding and comprehension, and wondering what others thought.

In that day and age she probably had every idea what would happen to a black person if a white woman said they'd laid hands on her.

She should be found and have the papers served to her.

But then what about the woman that lied about the young black boy that was given the death sentence? Should she be found and served, if she isn't dead? She should, in my opinion, but I think she's dead, I can't remember.

He was from the North, visiting a relative in the South. The North of course was a racist place too, but the situation was more extreme in the South. Its been said perhaps Emmett, as he was a child, hadn't really appreciated the gravity of his harmless comment. I read he said "hey baby" or something along those lines. I'm certain the touching her accusation was an utter lie.

I didn't think you were supporting her. I thought you were posing a moral question about pursuing someone who is very very old.

I understand your point now. Your point is more complex...the idea of potentially punishing her whilst those who physically killed him got off. Tough one. But punishments don't always need to mean prison, at least some legal acknowledgement of her part would be something right.

And I actually agree with you on the trigger warning. I think we need to be careful with images like these and dismissing them as 'just history' - it sort of dehumanises him. The bayeux tapestry example is very silly - that was a piece of propaganda made by William's brother, not a photograph from a boy who only died in 1955.

Emmett Till was lynched. Let's call it what it was.

He was an innocent child who was fucking LYNCHED - a child - brutally murdered because of sheer racism and nothing but racism.

Read up on the details. This was not some misunderstanding, but part of an orchestrated campaign (KKK involvement) to drive black people away through violence.

The men who tore Emmett Till to pieces and brutally tortured him faced no justice. The police chief in charge of the investigation was well known to be a local Klan member (during the trial, black people including Emmett's family were forced to sit in racially segregated seating, and at one point when the black viewers filed in after lunch, the sheriff stood up in open court and cried out, "Hello n**rs!") and the jury was 100% white and were given beer while listening to testimony, and made disrespectful remarks towards the murdered child and his family. They found the two men innocent after 67 minutes and one publicly commented the only reason it took that long was because they were drinking.

There is no evidence that he ever touched the woman, and multiple eye witnesses said it never happened.

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole "he whistled at her" thing never happened and was something they faked (maybe even faked after the fact) to justify killing a black kid.

The murderers confessed. They literally gave an interview to a magazine bragging that they killed him (and were PAID for the interview! They were paid $4000 by the magazine, literally profiting off murder!) and basically said they didn't think they did anything wrong. The trial was essentially fake.

We cannot divorce this murder from the circumstances, or ignore the context. This is not a case of a woman accusing a man, and the woman's loved ones take revenge. This murder happened in the Deep South in the 1950s, in an area ruled by the KKK, and when violence against black people and police either looking the other way or actively engaging, was extremely common. The only thing that makes the Emmett Till murder unusual is that his mother demanded on an open casket to show the world what they'd done to her son, and it got into the press and sparked a major national scandal due to the level of violence and the fact he was so young. You have to understand black people were killed all the time and people mainly didn't care; black people in 50s Deep South were not regarded as human beings.

The shameful thing is it is still happening. Trayvon Martin, a child, was murdered buying skittles. Breonna Taylor was murdered while asleep in her bed. Ahmaud Arbery was murdered because a couple of rednecks were driving around wanting to kill black people, and they later made up lies about a burglar to justify murdering an unarmed man in cold blood, after hunting him like an animal. Plenty of posters on Mumsnet thought that was fine or played the "well but maybe they did think he was a burglar" card (while threads about BLM protests are full of posts calling black people thugs).

The amount of racism around even today is sickening.

If your only purpose in posting about this is to ask legal questions about Mississippi statute of limitations or writs of habeus corpus and limit the discussion to analysis of whether or not she can be arrested, maybe the legal board would be a better place?

I don't engage in tragedy porn myself and I certainly understand that we all want to avoid over exposing ourselves to distressing materials but this is not a gratuitous use of what was in fact documentary evidence of a type of crime that the US was doing its utmost to ignore and deny.

Thousands of Blacks were lynched in the American South but most people denied that it was happening. Emmett Till is probably the most well known because his mother had the resolve to force us to face it, to our eternal shame. Over a hundred thousand people came to his wake to bear witness to what was done to him. I think that it is a disservice to her to encourage people to choose to avoid it now so as not to trigger their what? Complacency? Discomfort?

The Emmett Till case is one of the most pivotal moments in the twentieth century in the US and one that still has not been resolved. If it causes you anxiety and a downward spiral I would recommend that you not read up on it because it's not possible to learn more about it without being exposed to the image or graphic descriptions of what happened to him. It's just not. His story is only known because his mother had those pictures published. It changed the whole country. It's the only reason you know about the case now.

Jesus Christ I just saw the photo of him dead in the casket, and fuck yes they should track that murdering bitch down and rub that photo in her stupid face. Ageing doesn't make you sweet and harmless, doesn't change anything about you actually. And perhaps been blind and scared in a cell might give her a tiny insight into what that poor child suffered. Fuck her, she started the whole mess, time she faced up it and finished it. His relatives and the larger black community deserve compassion more than her

Yes, I read about this a while back. It's appalling and I don't know what to think - whether she should face justice or not as she's elderly and has terminal cancer. I expect that she should do so before it's too late. Whatever happens the past cannot be altered and nothing will bring poor Emmet back.

Thank you for this post, @DaniRabbity

The only way we can attempt to honour Emmett Till and the countless others who were murdered in that period is to recognise what is still happening. I think it starts with calling out racism, every single time, no exceptions.

@DaniRabbity that is really good post.

Then you clearly don't understand this case.

He was from the north and lived in a city with a lot of civil rights activity, he was apparently told multiple times by the family he was visiting to watch his behaviour, so it's quite possible he said something.

Of course that something is never enough to warrant killing anyone over, but statements such as yours don't really stack up to scrutiny based on what his own family have said

In that case can anyone be tried for a crime that was commited as a result of any interaction that they had. For example, if you have 2 friends who are both single so you fix them up on a blind date & one of them murders the other one can you be charged with an offence because if wouldn't have happened if you had not intervened by setting them up on a date.

From what I understand its about proving intent. Your blind date example there was no intent of harm so there would be no prosecution. In this case wouldn't it be about proving her intent for Emmett to come to harm.

@ReginaGeorgeismyname and @alphapie

Thanks for that. Still not a cell in my body believes a black teen in America 1955 flirted with a white woman.

@Tania64 your analogy doesn't work though as at no pont does the person setting up the blind dare incite someone else to commit a crime.

Then you're just a bit ignorant, as his own family have said the opposite.

Try her. A white woman in 1955 Mississippi knew exactly what

Not really, no. Context matters. If you set someone up with a human trafficker or a serial killer, knowing they’d almost certainly be trafficked or killed as a result, then it’s fair to say you are an accessory.

@alphapie perhaps I am ignorant I haven't looked at interviews by his family. Do feel free to enlighten me and post a link. Thanks love xxx

Its in school history textbooks. The context of him being being from Chicago is highly significant