Carolyn Bryant Donham [Also] Claims Victimhood in Her Memoir About the Murder of Emmett Till
The woman directly responsible for one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history proclaims to the victim of "an altered life."
“I always felt like a victim as well as Emmett. He came in our store and put his hands on me with no provocation. Do I think he should have been killed for doing that? Absolutely, unequivocally, no! Did we both pay a price for it, yes, we did. He paid dearly with the loss [of] his life. I paid dearly with an altered life.” - Carolyn Bryant Donham
These are the words of Carolyn Bryant Donham on the last page of her 100-page memoir, I Am More Than A Wolf Whistle, as dictated to her daughter-in-law between 2008-2009. Donham, whose claims of being assaulted by 14-year-old Emmett Till at their family store, is still alive at 88 years old, and still void of punishment for catalyzing one of the most horrid racially motivated murders in American history.
As readers of this publication, and presumably as advocates for justice, I will not insult your intelligence by recanting the specifics of this case. We know that Carolyn’s husband, Roy Bryant, and her brother-in-law JW Milam kidnapped Emmett from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, on account of Donham’s accusation of being sexually violated. We know that Emmett’s mother, Mamie galvanized Civil Rights leaders at the time, and the world at large to hyper-focus on the injustice done to her son. We know that the murder and kidnapping trial of Roy Bryant and JW Milam was rife with intimidation of Black witnesses, featured an all-white, all-male jury and created a direct path to Bryant and Milam’s exoneration.
We know this history and the consequential impact it has had on similar cases in which lies told about Black people resulted in death at either the hands of the state or racist vigilantes.
But what we’ve learned through the discovery of Donham’s unpublished memoir is that she also is audacious enough…or privileged enough…or delusional enough to believe that she too is a victim of the crime that took place in the summer of 1955 in Money, Mississippi.
NewsOne contributor, Dr. Stacey Patton, received a leaked copy of I Am More Than a Wolf Whistle where Donham participates in a healthy amount of revisionist history, speaking from the perspective of someone who does not have anyone who was close to the case, the perpetrators of the crime, nor the immediate family of the actual victim, that are still alive to challenge her misremembering (see: lies).
What Carolyn Bryant Donham was a victim of was an abusive marriage to Roy Bryant that likely caused her to fabricate the extent of what happened in the exchange between her and Emmett Till, out of fear of what onlookers would go back and tell her husband about the interaction. What she was born into was the hyper-racist, patriarchal caste system of the Deep South that was as protective of the virtue of white womanhood as much as it was denigrating of it. Yes, the social hierarchy of the mid-1950s rural South was not kind to women, but also yes, Carolyn Bryant Donham absolutely weaponized the Gone With the Wind/damsel-in-distress characterization of southern white womanhood to feed the lie that led to the murder of Emmett Till.
And after 67 years, just recently (as in two weeks ago) an arrest warrant for Donham was found in the basement of a courthouse in Greenwood, Mississippi, making her claims of victimhood even more absurd than they were at the time she dictated those words to her daughter-in-law to transcribe. Her dodging accountability is itself senior citizen years old, so there is no victimhood for her to claim as it relates to this case.
What she is — is favored and a beneficiary of a legal system that is still imbalanced in its conviction of white folks who murder Black people, and at that time did not see Black people as deserving of any kind of equal protection under the law. Over the decades she has lied and double-talked and backpeddled and contorted the account of what happened the day of Emmett’s alleged transgression, and about the the roles that both herself and her husband and brother-in-law played in Emmett’s murder.
I am not holding my breath for her to be ever held accountable, but I am disgusted by the idea that she would ever equate whatever social isolation she has felt to the irreparable destruction her lie caused.
Disgusted, but not at all surprised.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donney Rose is a Writer, Organizer and Chief Content Editor at The North Star
I am an old woman, just like Donham. Therefore, I can speak to her and say, "Carolyn, age gives you no 'pass' on the choice you've made to destroy a young boy is such a horrific manner. You are not the victim here."
It so parallels the To Kill a Mockingbird case. It's disgusting. I don't care about her abusive husband. She knew right and wrong, innocent and guilty. I hope she does time, regardless of age, in many ways no different than the Nazi Camp guards.