“Mississippi Grand Jury Declines to Indict Woman in Emmett Till Murder Case” was the headline on August 9, 2022. The woman is Carolyn Bryant Donham (now 88), who accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of whistling at her in 1955. Her late husband, Roy Bryant, was one of the men who murdered Till, though an all-white jury acquitted the two defendants. Ms. Donham was again in the news when an unserved 1955 warrant for her arrest in the Till case was found in a Greenwood, Mississippi court basement. This year also saw the unauthorized release of her unpublished memoir, which was dictated in 2008 to Donham’s daughter-in-law. And just recently, a rare photo of her was taken. Now living in Kentucky, it was the first time in over two decades in which she had been seen in public.

How legally and morally culpable is Carolyn Bryant? And what about her unpublished memoir? How much of it is true? Devery Anderson, one of the leading Emmett Till scholars, will answer such questions and others, in conversation with Ronald Collins, a retired law professor and the Library’s first Distinguished Lecturer. 

Devery Anderson is the author of Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement. He earned a BA in history from the University of Utah and a Master’s in publishing from George Washington University. He is the editor or co-editor of four books related to Mormons and the West, two of which won the Steven F. Christensen Award for Best Documentary from the Mormon History Association in 2006. His forthcoming book, A Slow, Calculated Lynching: The Story of Clyde Kennard, will be published next fall. He is the marketing manager for Signature Books, a scholarly publishing house in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is the father of three children and the grandfather of two.

Ronald Collins is the former Harold S. Shefelman scholar at the University of Washington Law School. He served as a Supreme Court fellow for Chief Justice Warren Burger. He is the editor of the weekly blog First Amendment News and is on the editorial board of SCOTUSblog. He is also the co-chair of The First Amendment Salons and the co-director of the History Book Festival. He is the author of some dozen books. He has taught a class on the Emmett Till tragedy three times, the first of which was offered under the auspices of the Lewes Public Library. His next book, Tragedy on Trial, is on the Emmett Till murder trial and its aftermath. 

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