Emmett Till case has resurfaced

Donald Kelly, Co-Entertainment Editor

In 2007, Carolyn Bryant, who accused Emmett Till of verbally and physically harassing her in Mississippi in 1955, admitted that she lied.

Bryant was working on August 20, 1955, when she accused him of verbally and physically harassing her. Till, 14 years old at the time and visiting from Chicago and was visiting his cousins. Four days later Bryant’s husband and his half-brother took Till from his relative’s house, tortured, and killed him.

She originally testified in court that he had made physical and verbal advances on her when he visited the store where she worked. Now she’s going back on the things she said in the trial. In the book ‘The Blood of Emmett Till,” which is being released this year, it was revealed that Bryant admits in a 2007 interview what she told the jury really didn’t happen, according to nypost.com.

According to Vanity Fair, she told the author of the book, Timothy Tyson, that it wasn’t true. She said that she didn’t exactly remember what happened when Till was there or even the rest of that day. She just remembers Till coming in and buying two cents worth of gum.

Also in the interview, she told Tyson that the fact he was shot, hung with barbed wire, had his eyes gouged out, and other gashly wounds, in addition to being thrown in the Tallahassee river could never be deserved to any human no matter what.

“The things that happened to him (Till) cannot be justified by anybody,” said Bryant.

It’s hard to process the fact that the same person that made the above statements would have lied.

Bryant also told Tyson that she felt ‘tender sorrow’ for Till’s mother, but she didn’t mention her feeling any remorse or guilt for what happened to Till because of her lie.

If I were Carolyn Bryant, the first thing I would have done,  if I truly felt bad for Emmett Till’s mother, is tell her I was sorry and hope she accepted my apology. Her statement  makes me think she wasn’t truly in an empathetic state of mind, that she thought this was something that should have happened to Till anyway.

Till’s mother died in 2003, and shortly after that in 2004 they reopened the case of Till to see if any accomplices could be tried in court. The police were trying to put accomplices in jail rather than the two people that actually committed the murder. The judge and jury missed the chance to put the actual killers behind bars many years ago. Three years later they ended up ending the investigation because the evidence left was insufficient to where they could pursue any more charges.

I know Bryant should have told the truth when she testified in front of the jury what actually happened. Maybe that would have changed the jury’s mind, but I think it was more impactful that she lied up front. There’s no way they could predict how that could change history, but I would say it definitely started movement for the advancement of black people because they were enraged by the outcome of the trial. This sparked so many things like Rosa Parks. She refused to give her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama just months after Till’s death. This was the start of the Civil Rights Movement.