Emmett Till Was Lynched, and His Family Was Denied Justice: All About the Murder that Shocked the Nation

At just 14 years old, Emmett Till's life was savagely cut short during the summer of 1955.

The Black teen from Chicago was visiting family members in Money, Miss., when a white woman, 21-year-old shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant Donham, said he had propositioned and lewdly grabbed her at her family's grocery store on August 24.

In response to the accusations, several days later Emmett was kidnapped from a relative's home in the middle of the night, beaten and lynched. His mutilated body was discovered three days later in the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a metal fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His tragic death is the subject of the new movie Till, starring Jalyn Hall, Danielle Deadwyler and Whoopi Goldberg.

Emmett's Murderers Walk Free

In September of that year, Bryant's husband, Roy Bryant, and Bryant's half-brother, J.W. Milam, were tried for Emmett's murder.

After an hour-long deliberation, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted the pair—who, when they were no longer facing legal jeopardy, admitted in a 1956 interview in Look magazine that they were guilty of the murder.

Photographs of Till's hideously mutilated body taken at his funeral in Chicago were printed in the media and caused outraged reactions around the country and overseas. The young man's lynching, and the subsequent acquittal of his killers, became a catalyst of the national civil rights movement.

Donham Reportedly Recants Her Accusations Against the Teen

In 2007, Donham reportedly recanted part of her story.

In an interview with historian Timothy B. Wilson, author of The Blood of Emmett Till, she reportedly said Emmett never touched or made sexual advances toward her, and she stood by those claims again in a 2017 interview.

In Donham's 109-page unpublished memoir, I Am More Than A Wolf Whistle, obtained by The Associated Press in July 2022, she also denied identifying Emmett as the teen who had offended her.

"I tried to protect him by telling [my husband] Roy that, 'He's not the one. That's not him. Please take him home,'" she said in the manuscript, co-authored by her daughter-in-law.

"I did not wish Emmett any harm and could not stop harm from coming to him, since I didn't know what was planned for him," Donham claims of the night he was kidnapped and killed.

In her memoir, which she intended to remain under seal until 2036, Donham claims that, like Till, she was a victim who "paid dearly with an altered life" for his murder and lynching.

"I have always prayed that God would bless Emmett's family. I am truly sorry for the pain his family was caused," she wrote.

Emmett's Family Calls for Justice

Also in the summer of 2022, activists with the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for Donham in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. In response to the discoveries, Emmett's cousin Deborah Watts, who heads the foundation, said criminal charges against Donham should follow the newly surfaced evidence.

"I truly believe these developments cannot be ignored by the authorities in Mississippi," Watts said at the time, as PEOPLE previously reported.

Mississippi Grand Jury Declines to Charge Emmett's Accuser

In August 2022, roughly seven hours of testimony from investigators and witnesses was not enough to persuade a Mississippi grand jury to charge Donham with kidnapping and manslaughter, despite the contradictory evidence his accuser presented to investigators and historians over the years.

The jury claimed evidence was lacking in the pursuit of charges against the then 87-year-old Donham.

At the time, Emmet's cousin, Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr., who was reportedly the last living witness to the teen's kidnapping, called the jury's decision, "unfortunate, but predictable," according to the AP.

"The prosecutor tried his best, and we appreciate his efforts, but he alone cannot undo hundreds of years of anti-Black systems that guaranteed those who killed Emmett Till would go unpunished, to this day," Parker said, per the outlet.

"The fact remains that the people who abducted, tortured, and murdered Emmett did so in plain sight, and our American justice system was and continues to be set up in such a way that they could not be brought to justice for their heinous crimes," he said.