Half-brothers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were able to walk away free men on Sept. 23, 1955, after a jury in Sumner, Mississippi, acquitted them of killing Till, a Black teenager from Chicago who was accused of “wolf-whistling” as Bryant’s wife, Carolyn Bryant Donham, the Chicago Tribune reports. Just months after the acquittal, in January 1956, the two men admitted to killing Till in an interview with Look magazine.
During the three-day trial, prosecutors presented testimony from Moses Wright, Till’s great-uncle, who witnessed his abduction, and Willie Reed, a Black sharecropper who overheard Bryant and Milam torturing Till.
The defense argued that the mutilated body found in the Tallahatchie River was not Till’s and included Bryant Donham’s testimony, in which she claimed she was “scared to death” after alleging Till grabbed and threatened her. After just over an hour of deliberation, the all-white, all-male jury returned a not-guilty verdict.
“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” Tyson claimed Bryant Donham told him.
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Source: Black Enterprise
