Carolyn Bryant Donham’s unpublished memoir is not the first time she spoke out on the topic of Emmett Till’s murder. According to The New York Times reporting from 2017, Donham spoke with Duke University professor Timothy B. Tyson, author of “The Blood of Emmett Till,” and in their conversation, Donham walked back her statements made in the 1950s. At that time, Donham said Till made crude sexual comments toward her. Speaking with Tyson, Donham said (via The New York Times), “[T]hat part is not true.”
Though both Roy Donham and John Milam later admitted they murdered Till, they could not be retried due to their acquittal from an all-white, all-male jury. In part of a reopened investigation, Till’s body was exhumed for an autopsy in 2004, and original trial transcripts were recovered. In 2007, a grand jury declined to indict Donham — or any other still-living potential accomplices — for Till’s brutal killing, as The New York Times goes on to note.
