Emily Brown
The cousin of Emmett Till has filed a lawsuit to try and force the arrest of the woman involved in the kidnapping which led to Till's lynching.
Till, who was Black, was just 14 years old when he was accused in 1955 by white woman Carolyn Bryant Donham, then named Carolyn Bryant, of making improper advances towards her in a shop.
Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later tortured him, killed him, and left his body to be found in a river.
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Donham's husband at the time, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were tried for murder but ultimately acquitted by an all-white jury. The pair confessed months later in an interview with Look magazine for which they were both paid.
Last June, a team doing research at the courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi, where the lynching took place, discovered a 1955 arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant, who was named on the document as 'Mrs. Roy Bryant'.
The warrant had never been served and Donham, who is now in her late 80s, had gone on to live in North Carolina and Kentucky in more recent years.
The discovery came after the US Justice Department announced in December 2021 that it had ended its latest investigation into Till's murder.
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But even after the arrest warrant was found, the office of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in July there was no new evidence to try to pursue a criminal case against Donham.
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Till's cousin, Patricia Sterling of Jackson, Mississippi, is now trying to force the police to take action as she filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday (7 February) against the current Leflore County sheriff, Ricky Banks.
The lawsuit aims to get Banks to serve the warrant against Donham.
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It reads: "But for Carolyn Bryant falsely claiming to her husband that Emmett Till assaulted her Emmett would not have been murdered.
"It was Carolyn Bryant's lie that sent Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam into a rage, which resulted in the mutilation of Emmett Till's body into [an] unrecognizable condition.”
Speaking to The Associated Press, Sterling's attorney, Trent Walker, said: “We are using the available means at our disposal to try to achieve justice on behalf of the Till family."
Court records on Friday showed the lawsuit had not yet been served on the sheriff.
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Till's death became a major milestone in the civil rights movement as his mother insisted on an open casket to allow the public to see what the killers had done to her child.