Warrant in Emmett Till case found 70 years later in court basement, family wants woman arrested

Emmett Till’s lynching case is still not off the hooks as new evidence surfaced for the same. A group making some discovery about the case 70 years later has rehashed into what happened. The group in effort of finding new evidence in his lynching case was looking at Mississippi courthouse’s basement where they found an unserved arrest warrant against a White woman in 1955.

The warrant was addressed to Carolyn Bryant Donham also known as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” in the document. It was discovered last week as told by Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill to The Associated Press on Wednesday. The documents are filed in the boxes and it was difficult to pinpoint where the warrant for August 29, 1955 would be present. They narrowed it down to the 50s and 60s, according to Stockstill and just had good luck supporting them. They also said that the document was genuine.

The search was started by the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation which included two members of Emmett Till's family: Deborah Watts, head of the Foundation and her daughter, Teri Watts. They want authorities to use the warrant 70 years later to arrest Donham, who at the time of the lynching was married to one of the two White men who were tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was kidnapped from a relative's home, killed and dumped into a river.


Teri Watts wants Donham to be charged and serve time. Donham set the ball rolling on the case in August 1955 by accusing the 14-year-old Till of making improper gestures to her at a family store in Money, Mississippi. A cousin of Till who was present had testified that Till whistled at the woman, which backfired in the face of Mississippi's racist social structure of the era.

According to the evidence present, a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later took his life. The arrest warrant against Donham was made public at the time, but the Leflore County police told the press that he did not want to "bother" the woman as she had two little children to look after.