Timothy Tyson, the researcher whose 2017 book is credited with prompting the U.S. Justice Department to reopen its investigation into the murder of Emmett Till, is skeptical of the federal agency’s motivation.
On the day the story broke about the renewed federal interest in the 1955 atrocity, Tyson said at a news conference that although he supports the inquiry, he believes the feds’ action may be for “political show” — an effort to distract from the Trump administration’s controversies.
That theory is a stretch, given how this story broke more than three months after the Justice Department had filed a report informing Congress that it had reopened the investigation after previously concluding there were no federal charges to pursue.
But just as this development is old news, so is the supposed “bombshell” investigators are said to be looking at.
Early last year, when Tyson’s book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” was published, it created a major buzz with its revelation that Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white shopkeeper whose attractiveness proved fatal to Till, told Tyson in 2008 that she had lied about what exactly the black 14-year-old from Chicago did and said to her in their 1955 encounter at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money.
She said she had lied on the witness stand and also a half-century later to an FBI agent the first time the Justice Department revived the cold case.
But that confession had been reported in another author’s book two years earlier with little notice. Long before that, most everyone who studied the case assumed that Donham had lied — and probably had been coached into it — when she tried to help her first husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, by testifying that Till had grabbed her and propositioned her.
Her acknowledgment of the lies may have been good for her soul, but it doesn’t leave prosecutors with much on which to base an indictment.
There is no evidence, for example, that Donham told her husband or Milam that Till had wolf-whistled at her, much less embellished on the story soon after the interaction.
It’s more likely that her lies — rather than spurring the kidnapping and murder of Till — were concocted after the fact by the killers themselves or their defenders. Moreover, as offensive as the lies were, they had no bearing on the all-white, all-male jury’s decision to acquit the killers.
The jurors never heard her testimony, as it was given outside of their presence and was ruled inadmissible by the presiding judge. Nor did they need much moral cover to exonerate any white man who enforced the racist code of the times that said black males after puberty were to steer clear of white women.
So, for all the global attention last week’s story got, any prosecution of the nearly 84-year-old Donham is unlikely to be successful.
The obstacles are the same as when the Justice Department closed its file in 2007. Memories are foggy — what few living ones are left. The statute of limitations has passed on most of the possible charges. The only criminal avenue conceivably left to pursue would be trying to prove Donham was an accessory to Till’s murder.
To do that, prosecutors would have to show that she was the heretofore unknown person who identified Till to his abductors from inside the vehicle that stole him away from his great-uncle’s home.
They also would have to show that she was a willing accomplice and knew of the abductors’ homicidal intent. It would be difficult for prosecutors to counter the most likely defense — which rings true to the types of rough characters Bryant and Milam were — that Donham went with them for fear of what would happen to her if she didn’t.
One possible crack in that defense would be if Donham, in an unreleased memoir, admitted to more than what’s currently known. That memoir is locked up in the University of North Carolina archives, where it is supposed to sit until 2036 or until she dies, whichever comes first.
The Justice Department could subpoena the memoir. Maybe it contains incriminating evidence. If it doesn’t, there is really no path left to quench a 63-year-old desire to hold someone accountable for Till’s death.
Truth in this case may be attainable. Justice, at least in an earthly court, is probably not.
