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  4. Demonstrators searched a senior living center for the woman connected to the death of Emmett Till after an arrest warrant from the 1950s was discovered

Demonstrators searched a senior living center for the woman connected to the death of Emmett Till after an arrest warrant from the 1950s was discovered

Taylor Ardrey   

Demonstrators searched a senior living center for the woman connected to the death of Emmett Till after an arrest warrant from the 1950s was discovered
International2 min read
  • People searched a senior living center in an effort to locate Carolyn Bryant Donham.
  • Donham, a white woman, accused Emmett Till of making advances at her in the 1950s prompting his brutal murder.

Demonstrators demanding the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham, a white woman connected to the death of Emmett Till, marched to her last known residence and a senior living center in Raleigh, North Carolina, WRAL reported.

"I want her to go turn herself in, and I want her to not be able to get no peace until she sees Emmett Till's face," a demonstrator said, per the outlet.

The group of activists on Wednesday first went to an apartment in North Raleigh to look for Donhma before heading to a senior living center, which had been placed on lockdown, according to WRAL.

Calls for Donham's arrest were renewed after a recent discovery of an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for Donham whose claims have been connected to the kidnapping and lynching of Till, a Black teenager at the time.

The demonstrators found the facility through the affidavit of the arrest warrant, per the report.

"Time to face your demons. Come on out," a demonstrator said, WRAL reported.

During a visit to Mississippi in 1955, Donham's said that Till whistled and made advances toward her, prompting the kidnapping of 14-year-old Till by her husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J. W. Milam. The duo tortured and killed Till before disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Both Bryant and Milam were later acquitted by an all-white jury for the brutal murder of Till, although they reportedly confessed to the crime. Donham, who was not charged for the incident, is still alive and now in her late 80s.

According to the arrest warrant for Donham, which was found last month by a group of people searching in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse, she, Milam, and Bryant "willfully, unlawfully and feloniously and without lawful authority, forcibly seize and confine and kidnap" Till, as Insider previously reported.

"You cannot ignore this. That is the reason why the warrant needs to be served, and it will help create change," Till's cousin, Priscilla Sterling, said, WRAL reported. "If this is what's needed to do for us to change our mindset, our behaviors, and attitudes in the society, then this will do it. This will do it. Execute the warrant."

In 2017, a historian and Duke University professor said in a book that Donham, in 2008, admitted that a part of her testimony was "not true." The Justice Department subsequently reopened an investigation that began in 2004 as a part of its Cold Case Initiative.

Donham, who was never charged, later denied to FBI recanting her original testimony.

Last December, the Department of Justice closed the re-investigation while calling Till's death "one of the most infamous acts of racial violence in our country's history."

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