JUSTICE FOR EMMETT
Feds reopen horrific civil rights slay case
“New information” has spurred the government to reopen its probe into the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till (right) in Mississippi.
Federal investigators have reopened their probe into the racially motivated 1955 murder of black teenager Emmett Till, according to a blockbuster report that was no surprise to one relative still hoping for “justice.”
Cousin Airickca GordonTaylor told the Daily News that officials confirmed the revived investigation to her family last year.
She said the quiet reactivation followed shortly after the blockbuster 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” said white woman Carolyn Donham admitted she lied when she testified Till grabbed her around her waist and made sexual remarks.
“That part's not true,” Donham reportedly told author Timothy B. Tyson in a 2008 interview included in the book.
Gordon-Taylor, whose mother was Till's close cousin and lived with him in Chicago before his death, said the investigation “was reactivated in 2017, after the book was released and the information about Carolyn came out.
“Those who are involved knew it was reactivated. This is the public confirmation. We were not surprised with the announcement,” she said.
She declined to elaborate on her knowledge of the probe, but said her family hopes it will yield results.
“Our family wants justice. The community wants justice. Justice is important to all of us,” Gordon-Taylor said Thursday. “Closure is important for our family and the community — those who have stood with us all these years.”
Till was 14 years old and visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was abducted and brutally killed by two white men, including Donham's husband at the time, Roy Bryant.
The teen was beaten, shot and tossed off a bridge into a river with a heavy fan blade fastened around his neck with barbed wire.
His killers, now dead, confessed to his slaying after they were acquitted at their 1955 trial.
Till's mother, Mamie TillMobley, made a courageous decision at the time of her only son's death, insisting on an open casket that revealed his bloated, mutilated body to the world.
The heinous hate crime became a touchstone of racial violence in the Jim Crow era-South and a catalyst for the civil-rights movement.
The reopening of the federal investigation was first reported by the Associated Press on Thursday.
The AP said the Justice Department told Congress in a report in March that it was reinvestigating the decadesold slaying in Money, Miss., after receiving “new information.”
The federal report, sent annually to Congress under a law that bears Till's name, did not reveal what the new information was.
The case was previously closed in 2007 with authorities saying the suspects were dead. A state grand jury failed to file any new charges.
Attempts to reach Donham, now 83, and a spokesman for the Justice Department were not successful Thursday.
Till-Mobley, who died in 2003 at age 81, dedicated her life to teaching, activism and preserving her son's memory.
Gordon-Taylor, 48, now runs the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation. The group's Twitter account retweeted a news article in April that questioned why Donham “remains free.”
“Emmett was (Till-Mobley's) only child. That was her baby. She put all of her blood, sweat and tears into preserving Emmett's memory. It's important that people never forget,” she told The News.
“Mamie wanted justice,” she continued. “We all rallied around Mamie when this happened and want to see this through.”
In his book, Tyson said Donham gave him a transcript of her unpublished memoir, “More Than a Wolf Whistle: The Story of Carolyn Bryant Donham.”
According to the ClarionLedger in Jackson, Miss., the memoir won't be available for public inspection at the University of North Carolina archives until 2036 or until Donham dies — but authorities could subpoena the document.