Emmett Till murder case is revived

The federal government has quietly reopened its investigation into the murder of Emmett Till, the 14-yearold African-American boy whose abduction and killing remains, almost 63 years later, among the starkest and most searing examples of racial violence in the South.

The Justice Department said its renewed inquiry, which it described in a report submitted to Congress in late March, was “based upon the discovery of new information.” It is not clear, though, whether the government will be able to bring charges against anyone: Most episodes investigated in recent years as part of a federal effort to re-examine racially motivated murders have not led to prosecutions, or even referrals to state authorities.

It appeared that the government had chosen to devote new attention to the case after a central witness, Carolyn Bryant Donham, recanted parts of her account of what transpired in August 1955. Two men who confessed to killing Emmett, after they had been acquitted, are dead.

Emmett was visiting family in Money, Mississippi, deep in the Mississippi Delta, from Chicago when he went to a store owned by Donham and her then husband, who was one of the men who ultimately confessed to Emmett’s murder. Emmett was kidnapped and killed days later, his body tethered to a cotton gin fan with barbed wire and then cast into a river.

But Donham’s description of the events leading to the attack has repeatedly shifted. One account had the boy only insulting her verbally. In court, but without jurors present, she claimed that Emmett had made physical contact with her and spoken in crude, sexual language. She later told the FBI that Emmett had touched her hand.

And when she spoke to researcher Timothy B. Tyson in 2008, she acknowledged that it was “not true” that Emmett had grabbed her or made vulgar remarks.