The search for new evidence to bring legal accountability for those involved in the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era continues, filmmaker Keith Beauchamp says.
A Leflore County grand jury has yet again declined to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham for the 1955 abduction and lynching of Emmett Till, despite the discovery of an unserved arrest warrant in Donham’s name for kidnapping. The warrant dates back to the original investigation into the 14-year-old’s death, indicating that she was never arrested then.
A group from the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation has uncovered the decades-old warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham, the wife of one of 14-year-old Emmett Till’s murderers in 1955.
Former FBI agent Dale Killinger was the lead investigator in the bureau’s 2004 investigation of the crime. After a screening of documentarian Keith Beauchamp’s “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till” at Southern University on June 20, 2022, Killinger acknowledged that the FBI had never even investigated the lynching of Emmett Till at all prior to 2004.
A group of Black community leaders founded the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Jonesboro, La., with the goal of protecting the Black community and fighting back against KKK violence.
Valerie Reaves, the Higginbottom family historian who lives in the Atlanta area, mourns not only the loss of Elwood, but an entire branch of her family, she said on April 2, 2022, in her speech at the dedication of a long-overdue lynching memorial in the county where at least seven documented lynchings occurred.
Attorney Carlos Moore is wondering why a judge has not signed arrest warrants for Gregory and Brandon Case after his client, D’Monterrio Gibson, submitted affidavits last week alleging that they tried to kill him.
Exactly 100 years to the day since Willie Baker’s lynching, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Law, making lynching a federal hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. The House of Representatives passed it last month.
FedEx has reinstated pay for D’Monterrio Gibson, a Black FedEx driver who said two white men chased and shot at him on his route in Lincoln County. The 24-year-old Utica native said the incident happened while he was making deliveries in Brookhaven, Miss., on Jan. 24. While recounting the story to the Mississippi Free Press last week, Gibson said FedEx had initially asked him to return to the route after the shooting. When he declined, the company placed him on unpaid leave.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
125 S. Congress Street #1324
Jackson, MS 39201
info@mississippifreepress.org
tips@mississippifreepress.org
events@mississippifreepress.org
601-362-6121
The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).
