Nearly 70 years ago in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was abducted, brutally beaten, tortured and murdered in Drew, Mississippi. This horrific incident was the result of the false claim made by Carolyn Bryant when she accused Till of making improper advances at her outside of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market. Not long after Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were both tried for the murder, but was ultimately found not guilty by an all-white jury.
Protected against double jeopardy, the two confessed in an interview with Look Magazine in January 1956, and sold the story of how they tortured and murdered Till for a sum of $4,000. Last Tuesday (Feb. 7), Patricia Sterling filed a lawsuit against Ricky Banks, the current sheriff in Leflore County, Mississippi to seek further justice for her late cousin.
The suit looks to force Banks to serve an arrest warrant to Carolyn. On the original, 1955 unserved warrant, she is listed as “Mrs. Roy Bryant.” The document was found by a team looking for evidence surrounding Till’s murder case last June in a Mississippi courthouse basement. Trent Walker, Sterling’s attorney, spoke to the Associated Press regarding the matter. “We are using the available means at our disposal to try to achieve justice on behalf of the Till family,” he said.
The original warrant was publicized in 1955, but was “swept under the rug” by the Leflore County sheriff, stating to reporters that Carolyn was raising two sons at the time and did not want to “bother” her. In an unpublished memoir, the now-89-year-old woman stated that she was unaware of what would happen to Till and that she did not want him dead.
A grand jury in Mississippi refused to indict her and stated that there was “lack of evidence.” The recent lawsuit filed by Sterling includes her rebuttal: “But for Carolyn Bryant falsely claiming to her husband that Emmett Till assaulted her, Emmett would not have been murdered,” she said. “It was Carolyn Bryant’s lie that sent Roy Bryant and JW Milam into a rage, which resulted in the mutilation of Emmett Till’s body into an unrecognizable condition.”