Chamblee54

You finish a post, but there is one more question. You ask Google, or better yet Duck Duck Go, and you find yourself falling down a TMI rabbit hole. This happened the other day with a post about Carolyn Bryant Donhem. If you read this post first, you will better understand the post below.
In 2017, The Blood of Emmett Till came out. Author “Timothy Tyson … alleged during a book-promotion tour that Carolyn Bryant-Donham had, during an interview with him nearly a decade earlier, recanted the account that she had provided under oath in proceedings related to her husband’s trial.” This announcement got a lot of publicity for the book.
Vanity Fair did its duty by reporting “In August of that year, while visiting a Deep South that he didn’t understand, Till had entered a store to buy two cents worth of bubble gum.” There were calls for the prosecution of CBD, even after the DOJ said that the statute of limitations had run out on anything CBD could be tried for. Finally, CBD died April 23, 2023. “Her death marks the last chance for anyone to be held accountable for a kidnapping and brutal murder that shocked the world.”
My question: exactly what did CDB retract? Was it the courtroom testimony, where she said that ELT accosted her physically. This testimony differed from a statement she gave to an attorney, after her husband’s arrest. The thing is, this testimony came after the murder. Many people say that Roy Bryant heard about the whistling incident from a third party, not his wife. The post-mortem testimony would not have led to the murder.
The Emmett Till lynching has seen more than its share of liars. Is Tim Tyson one of them? An article in Mississippi Today, written by Jerry Mitchell, has more information. “Tyson’s 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” lit the bomb that exploded around the world with this claim: The white woman at the center of the Emmett Till case, Carolyn Bryant Donham, had admitted she lied when she testified that he had grabbed her around the waist and uttered obscenities.”
The MT article had a few zesty quotes. “For Till’s cousin, Ollie Gordon, the revelation sounded like a ruse. She saw no logic, she said, in Donham sharing such information with someone she hardly knew. “I thought, ‘Oh, here we go. This man wants to sell his book,’” she said. “He knew if he put that lie out, that was going to help him sell the book.”
Mitchell met with Tyson after he met with CBD. “He told me her story mirrored her testimony, where she claimed Till had mauled her. · “You know she lied, don’t you?” I asked. · The statement surprised him, and afterward, I mailed him a copy of the statement she had made to the defense lawyer, where she mentioned nothing about Till grabbing her or talking about having sex with her.”
Vanity Fair had a tidbit that turned up in a lot of stories about the murder. “Four months after their irreversible acquittal, Milam and Bryant admitted their guilt to Look magazine, receiving a fee of some $3,000 for their story.” (Roy Bryant, husband of Carolyn, and his brother JW Milam, were acquitted for their role in the killing.) The Look magazine story is “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi”, by William Bradford Huie. TSSOAKIM took a bit of digging to find. There are a few stories debunking TSSAAKIM.
“Huie, author of numerous books that sold millions, had a reputation, described by David Halberstam, as a “roguish journalist” who was “considered more talented than respectable by many of his peers.” Huie’s honesty in reporting the Till case has been called into question by two of Till’s cousins, Simeon Wright (Moses Wright’s youngest son), and Wheeler Parker, who say Huie never talked with them.”
Mississippi Today has a banger article about TSSAAKIM, The writer and killers ‘stole the story of Emmett Till from his mother and family’. Bill Huie wrote a memo, and forgot to destroy it. “Huie wrote in his memo, “There appears no doubt that much of Mrs. Bryant’s testimony regarding physical contact with the Negro youth or alleged ‘obscene remarks’ was fabricated — probably at the suggestion of one of the lawyers.”
“Keith Beauchamp, a producer for the 2022 “Till” film … said Huie was far more passionate about making a movie than he was about telling the truth. “I am ‘hot’ in Hollywood right now,” Huie bragged to an editor. “This Mississippi story, with proper releases, is a good bet for $100,000,” the modern-day equivalent of more than $1.1 million. Sharing a “secret 15%” with the killers is “a damn good way for Milam and Bryant to make crime pay,” he wrote.”
Buie got releases from Bryant and Milam to do the story. There were, however, more men in the killing party. Buie wrote them out of the story, and got creative to do so.
“Not long after the sun rose the next morning, Willie Reed was walking across a plantation near Drew. He testified at trial that he saw four white men in the cab of a 1955 Chevy pickup with three Black men holding “a black boy” in the back of the truck. …Reed also testified that he heard “a whole lot of licks” in the barn and someone hollering, “Oh.””
“Here is the most incredible portion of the story,” Huie wrote in his memo. “Milam and [Roy] Bryant insist — and apparently they are truthful — that no one else was with them; that the two of them sat in the cab; that they did not tie the youth; that they did nothing more than menace him with their pistols; yet he remained ‘impudent’ and ‘full of fight’ all during the subsequent five-hour ordeal of driving around and whipping — and he never once tried to run!”
“The killers insisted that Till stayed the entire time in the back of the pickup, despite no one holding him there. “He wasn’t afraid of them!” Huie wrote in Look. “He was tough as they were. He didn’t think they had the guts to kill him.” … “Huie can’t write the story he wants to write, unless he eliminates Willie Reed and the other Black witnesses from the story.” … Huie had to concoct an “unafraid Till” to get the magazine to publish his article. “Had Till been scared, Huie’s narrative would have required extra men to guard him in the back of the truck,” he said. “But with the extra men, Look would not publish the story.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture is “Untitled”. It is in a collection of photographs that John Vachon took in May 1942. The locations were in Nebraska and Colorado. ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah

This content was published June 3, 2023. … On August 24, 1955, Emmett Louis Till (ELT) went into Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, in Money MS. Later, the cashier, Carolyn Bryant Donham (CBD), falsely accused ELT of making improper advances. Four days later, fourteen year old ELT was brutally murdered by Roy Bryant, the husband of CBD, and JW Milam. This is the story I had always heard, and routinely accepted as the truth.
Recently, I saw a video that told a different story. In this version, a third party told Roy Bryant about the incident. More importantly, CBD never recanted her story. When The Blood of Emmett Till came out, news that CBD had recanted her story … that ELT made advances in the store … caused a sensation. The video had a screen shot of a newspaper article, with details about the non-confession.
“Timothy Tyson’s book on Emmett Till became a bestseller thanks to the bombshell quote he attributed to Carolyn Bryant Donham — that she lied when she testified about Till accosting her. Donham’s daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, who was present for the two tape-recorded interviews Tyson did with Donham, said her mother-in-law “never recanted. Adding to the intrigue is the fact the quote Tyson attributed to Donham isn’t on the recordings. … “It is true that that part is not on tape because I was setting up the tape recorder,” Tyson said.”
“Davis Houck, co-author of Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press, said if Donham is saying she didn’t recant in her interview with Tyson, “we’re left with a familiar story: a predatory black ‘man’ threatened to rape her on the evening of Aug. 24. “He sees two problems with that: Her court testimony differs greatly from her initial statement, where she said Till grabbed her hand, asked for a date, said goodbye and whistled. When Till’s killers arrived at Mose Wright’s house, (where Till was abducted) they asked for “the boy who did the talking at Money.” They didn’t ask for the one who touched Donham. If she indeed recanted, he said, “we are, at long last, asked to see her as a pawn in the defense attorneys’ strategy.”
A justice department investigation found no proof that CBD recanted her initial accusation. “Donham denied to federal investigators that she lied in her testimony, a source with knowledge of the case said, and there were inconsistencies with statements made by Tyson. … Tyson stood by his reporting, describing Donham as unreliable in an emailed statement.” It is possible that Timothy Tyson invented the story to sell books.
So what did happen at the store in Money, MS? “Emmett was left alone in the store for a minute or so with Carolyn Bryant, the white woman working the store’s cash register. … As Carolyn Bryant would later tell the story in a Tallahatchie County courthouse, Till asked her for some candy inside a candy counter. When Bryant placed the candy on top of the counter, Till grabbed her right hand tightly and asked, “How about a date, baby?” When Bryant pulled her hand free and started to walk away, Till grabbed her by the waist near the cash register and told her, “You needn’t be afraid of me, baby I’ve [slept] with white women before.”
Till’s cousin, Simeon Wright, writing about the incident decades later, questioned Carolyn Bryant’s account. Entering the store “less than a minute” after Till was left inside alone with Bryant, Wright saw no inappropriate behavior and heard “no lecherous conversation.” Wright said Till “paid for his items and we left the store together.”
“There is, however, general agreement about what happened next outside the store. As Carolyn Bryant left the store and headed towards a car … Emmett whistled at her. Till’s cousin described it as “a loud wolf whistle, a big city ‘whee wheeeee!'” Till’s Mississippi cousins instantly knew that Till had broken a longstanding taboo relating to social conduct between blacks and whites, and that they were in grave danger. They quickly ran to their car and sped out of Money.”
The story about the *kid* from Chicago loudly whistling at CBD was a hot item in local conversations. Three days later,”Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, returns to Mississippi after working on a shrimping boat in Texas. That afternoon, at the store, an African-American teenager tells Roy about the August 24 incident at the store involving Till and his wife. When he asks Carolyn about the incident, she urges her husband to forget about it. But he doesn’t. … To do nothing after hearing the story involving his wife, Bryant later told an interviewer, would have shown himself to be “a coward and a fool.”
“Sometime on Saturday August 27, plans fell into place to kidnap the offending black teenager and “teach him a lesson.” Bryant’s half-brother, John W. Milam, readily agreed to help. … According to historian Hugh Whitaker, who interviewed dozens of Mississippians who knew Bryant and Milam, the two “were invariably referred to as ‘peckerwoods,’ ‘white trash,’ and other terms of disappropriation.”
“Within the next few hours, Bryant and Milam somehow learned that the wolf-whistler was staying at the home of “Preacher” Moses Wright. At 2:30 a.m., a vehicle with headlights off pulled up in front of Wright’s home east of Money. … When Wright went to the door, the man identified himself as Roy Bryant and said that he wanted to talk to “a fat boy” from Chicago. Standing on the porch with Bryant were Milam and a black man, hiding his face, who (according to his own later admission) was Otha Johnson, Milam’s odd-job man. The men searched the occupied beds looking for Till. Coming to Till’s bed, Milam shined a flashlight in the boy’s face and asked, “You the niggah that did the talking down at Money?” When Till answered, “Yeah,” Milam said, “Don’t say ‘yeah’ to me, niggah. I’ll blow your head off. Get your clothes on.” Warning the Wrights they’d be killed if they told anyone they had come by, Milam and Wright ushered Till out of the house and to their parked vehicle. Standing on the porch looking out into the dark, Moses Wright heard a woman’s voice–possibly Carolyn Bryant’s–from inside the vehicle tell the abductors they had found the right boy. What happened over the next three or four hours is not known for certain.”
An FBI document has conflicting details. “After deciding to kill Till, they traveled to a cotton gin at Boyle MS and picked up a discarded gin fan there. Milam is quoted as saying “When we got to that gin, it was daylight, and I was worried for the first time. Someone might see us and accuse us of stealing the fan.” … “They took Till’s body to a bridge in a secluded area, affixed the gin fan to Till and threw him off the bridge, into the Tallahatchie River” … “Two blacks, who worked for the Milams, were part of the group that beat and killed Till. One of the blacks discovered Till wasn’t dead so the two blacks killed him and helped in the disposal of his body.” At any rate, ELT was murdered, the gin fan was tied to his body, and the body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River.
One surprising detail is the participation of Black men in the crime. “Two potential key witnesses, both blacks who allegedly assisted with the abduction and murder of Till, were unavailable to the prosecution. Both Leroy “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Loggins, who prosecutors assumed only to be missing, were actually being held under false identities in a jail in Charleston, Mississippi under orders of Sheriff H. C. Strider, who had thrown the full weight of his office behind the defense efforts.”
Today is the third of June. Did Billy Joe McCallister jump into the Tallahatchie River? “Ode to Billy Joe” is a made up story. Choctaw Ridge is nowhere near the Tallahatchie River. Wikipedia does have an interesting comment about the Tallahatchie Bridge. “The wooden bridge collapsed in 1972 after being set alight by vandals. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles north of Greenwood.” Money is where Bryant’s Grocery Store is. The store’s name changed soon after the murder, and the store is now in dilapidated shape.
“To say that Bryant “made it all up” implies that she lied about the wolf-whistle, also. It is important to point out, however, that Till’s cousins — Maurice Wright, Simeon Wright, and Wheeler Parker — who witnessed the incident, were the ones who told the press about the whistle just days after it occurred. Bryant herself said nothing about the whistle publicly until the murder trial. Thus all news reports about the whistle up to the trial came directly from Till’s cousins.”
“But it was at the trial where Bryant added some sensational details that seemed to come out of nowhere, and this is where she lied. … Just five days after the murder, with her husband and brother-in-law sitting in jail, she told defense attorney Sidney Carlton a different story than the one she would tell in court three weeks later. Carlton’s hand-written notes make no mention of the more salacious parts. “Wednesday Aug. 24 about 7:30 or 8 P.M. (dark) boy came to candy counter & I waited on him & when I went to take money he grabbed my hand & said ‘how about a date’ and I walked away from him and he said ‘what’s the matter Baby can’t you take it?’ He went out door and said ‘goodbye’ and I went out to car & got pistol and when I came back he whistled at me—this whistle while I was going after pistol—didn’t do anything further after he saw pistol.’”
“Because Bryant’s story developed after Till’s death, it is clear the lies she told on the stand did not lead to murder but came later for the benefit of the jury in order to guarantee an acquittal. Also, Carolyn Bryant is not the one who told her husband about the store incident in the first place. He was out of town at the time but heard it three days after the fact from one of the young teens who was present at the store the night of the incident. … Carolyn only confirmed the incident to Roy after he confronted her. … Tyson told another detail about Bryant’s false story in a paper leaked online in 2014, saying it was concocted for her to use by defense attorneys and Bryant family members. For whatever reason, Tyson did not include this detail in his book. It is not on the notepad and presumably, is not on tape either.”
@GavinNewsom “His physical mannerisms are aggressive…I feel threatened by him.”-Marjorie Taylor Greene describing Rep. Bowman This is the kind of dangerous rhetoric that led to Emmett Till’s death. Everyone should call this out for what it is: blatant racism.” This type of overheated rhetoric is becoming common. It is based on a cynical version of a tragic history. It does not honor the memory of Emmett Till. “Everyone should call this out for what it is: blatant racism.”
Carolyn Bryant Donham Part Two is now available. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, GSU Library. The social media picture: “Peachtree Street at night, downtown Atlanta, Georgia, 1937.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah