Grand jury declines to indict white woman whose accusation set off lynching of Emmett Till

SSgt Ray Stone
..."In an unpublished memoir obtained last month by The Associated Press, Donham said she was unaware of what would happen to the 14-year-old Till, who lived in Chicago and was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was abducted, killed and tossed in a river. She accused him of making lewd comments and grabbing her while she worked alone at a family store in Money, Mississippi.

Donham said in the manuscript that the men brought Till to her in the middle of the night for identification but that she tried to help the youth by denying it was him. Despite being abducted at gunpoint from a family home by Roy Bryant and Milam, the 14-year-old identified himself to the men, she claimed."

this is hard. that was so long ago. would incarcerating the old lady make anything better now? It sounds like, based on her memoir, that she may be living with this every day of her life-
It is imperative that we never let the memory of Emmit Till fade away, especially now with the white supremacy/religious nationalism we're seeing around the country. The white supremacists today are killing not just black people, but also people of different beliefs, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews... I think this is a battle we will have forever, since religious nationalism/white supremacy can't be eradicated from hearts and minds.

Apparently there wasn't enough evidence from the 1955 case to get the jury to indict her. Not sure why you'd be surprised.

"Arrest warrants can "go stale" due to the passage of time and changing circumstances, and one from 1955 almost certainly wouldn't pass muster before a court, even if a sheriff agreed to serve it, said Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi."