Carolyn Bryant Donham is a woman from Mississippi, infamous for her role in the murder, torture, and kidnapping of 14-year-old Emmet Till in 1955. The murder sparked protests and helped influence the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68). ^[1]

Carolyn was born in 1934 in Indianola, Mississippi. At the time the city was known for having many segregationist and White supremacist Citizen's Councils. Her father worked as a plantation manager while her mother was a nurse. Carolyn dropped out of high school. She had won two beauty contests and got married Roy Bryant, an ex-soldierEx-Soldiers and Ex-Sailors Party of Manitoba. ^[1]

Carolyn and her husband Roy ran a small grocery, Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market, with a major customer base of black sharecroppers and their children.

The store was located at one end of the main street in the tiny town of Money, Mississippi the heart of the cotton-growing Mississippi Delta. They had two sons and lived in two small rooms in the back of the store. Carolyn later divorced her husband Roy and married two more times. ^[1]

According to Emmett Till's cousin Edelia Carthan, Carolyn Bryant is also the aunt of Phil Bryant, Mississippi's current governor. ^[9]

Carolyn Bryant Donham had claimed that on August 24, 1955 14-year-old Emmet Till, grabbed her, threatened her and flirted with her after buying some gum from her store; in her testimony, she said he grabbed her hand as he went to pay for bubble gum and said, “How about a date, baby?” Once Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. W. Milam heard the story they decided they had to kill Emmet Till. They found him staying at a relative's house at about 2:30 a.m. on August 28 and kidnapped him. They later tortured him and lynched him to death. ^[1]

Before the killing both Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were arrested and put on trial for the crimes.

During the trial Carolyn had claimed that Till had grabbed her and verbally threatened her.

She said that while she was unable to utter the “unprintable” word he had used (as one of the defense lawyers put it), “he said [he had]’”—done something – “with white women before.’” Both men were acquitted, by an all white male jury despite testimonies. Both Roy and J.W later admitting to the murders in a story they sold to Look magazine for $4,000, neither man was ever convicted of a crime or spent time in jail. ^{[1] [2]}

In a January 26, 2017 article by Vanity Fair, it was revealed that Carolyn had admitted that it was not true that Till had made verbal and physical advances on her and that she had fabricated parts of the story. Carolyn had made the admission while being interviewed in 2007 by author Timothy Tyson, for his book, The Blood of Emmett Till. Carolyn had told Tyson “That part’s not true,”, about her claim that Till had made verbal and physical advances on her. As for the rest of what happened that evening in the country store, she said she couldn’t remember. ^[2]

According to Tyson, Carolyn did not repent for her involvement in the murder; she did not join any racial reconciliation groups or to make an appearance at the new Emmett Till Interpretive Center.

However he said that “She was glad things had changed [and she] thought the old system of white supremacy was wrong, though she had more or less taken it as normal at the time.”

and that she had "felt tender sorrow" for the suffering of Emmett Till's mother Mamie Till-Mobley.

^[2]

As a result of Tyson’s book being published, investigators are reopening Till’s murder case.

FBI officials contacted Tyson months after the book’s publication, and Tyson provided all of his research materials as requested by investigators’ subpoenas. In March 2018, the United States Department of Justice sent a letter to Congress stating that the Till case would be reopened.^[16]