Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False

For six decades, she has been the silent woman linked to one of the most notorious crimes in the nation’s history, the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, keeping her thoughts and memories to herself as millions of strangers idealized or vilified her.

But all these years later, a historian says that the woman has broken her silence, and acknowledged that the most incendiary parts of the story she and others told about Emmett — claims that seem tame today but were more than enough to get a black person killed in Jim Crow-era Mississippi — were false.hThe woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, spoke to Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University professor — possibly the only interview she has given to a historian or journalist since shortly after the episode — who has written a book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” to be published next week.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/emmett-till-lynching-carolyn-bryant-donham.html?fbclid=IwAR2oKmINHqJYaSxUPZh8XCIVLr78jYSNrSDaLvXIml2kz6QLstGUUFnJLq0&login=google