The family of a black US teenager lynched almost 70 years ago hope the discovery of an old arrest warrant could finally lead to justice.
Emmett Till, 14, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered before being thrown in a river for allegedly flirting with a white woman.
Campaigners say they found the arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham, who accused the teenager of making advances toward her in Money, Mississippi.
She was identified as “Mrs Roy Bryant” in the unserved document that charges her over the 1955 kidnapping.
Her allegations led to Emmett being abducted from his home and killed, sparking the US civil rights movement.
The arrest warrant was found last week in a file that had gathered dust in a basement in a county courthouse in Greenwood.
Yesterday, the Mirror became the first news outlet to be given exclusive access to the original warrant in Leflore County Court by Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill.
He told how he had a hunch where the document would be, directing members of the Emmett Till Foundation to the basement of his court house.
He said: “I directed the team to where the files I thought could be.
“I was upstairs when I heard a commotion coming from the basement.
“It was a real sense of euphoria among them. A really great moment to find what they had been looking for.”
The document shows ticks above those names of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant to show they had been served the warrant but it was left blank above “Mrs Bryant”.
The sheriff at the time had written on the back of the documents he was unable to locate her “in my county” and then ended the hunt.
Mrs Bryant was later seen attending her husband and Milam’s trial.
Donham, who is now in her 80s, was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted weeks after Emmett was murdered.
Teri Watts, a relative of Emmett, said: “Serve it and charge her.”
On finding the warrant, Deborah Watts, the victim’s cousin, said: “I cried. We cried. We hugged. Unbelievable. We held each other. Justice has to be served.”
The warrant was discovered by a five-member search group of the Emmett Till Foundation led by members of the victim’s family, including Deborah and her daughter Teri.
An image of the warrant, charged J.W. Milam, Roy Bryant and Bryant’s then-wife – Mrs Roy Bryant – with kidnapping and orders their arrests.
It is dated August 29, 1955, and signed by the Leflore County Clerk.
Till, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he entered a shop where Donham, then 21, was working on August 24, 1955.
She set off the case by accusing the teenager of making improper advances at a family store in Money, Mississippi.
A cousin of Till who was there has said he whistled at the woman, which flew in the face of Mississippi’s racist social codes of the era.
Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him.
The arrest warrant against her was publicised at the time, but the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to “bother” the woman since she had two young children to care for.
Her husband and Milam were acquitted of Till’s murder soon after by an all-white jury, though they later admitted to the killing in an interview with Look magazine.
Milam died in 1980 and Bryant died in 1994, but his widow is still alive, and Emmett’s family hopes the warrant will lead to her arrest and, ultimately, justice.
Donham, most recently living in North Carolina, has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution.
But Teri said the Till family believes the warrant accusing her of kidnapping amounts to new evidence.
“This is what the state of Mississippi needs to go ahead,” she said.
District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose office would prosecute a case, declined comment on the warrant but pointed to a report in December about the Till case from the Justice Department, which said no prosecution was possible.
