Emmett Till traveled to Mississippi from Chicago in August 1955 to visit relatives. Dunham, then known as Caroline Bryant, accused him of making inappropriate advances on her at a grocery store.

According to Dunham, 14-year-old Till whistled at Dunham. She was 21 years old at the time. She later wrote in her memoirs that she did not realize the consequences of her accusation of Emmett Till.

killing

Till is kidnapped and charged in the wake of the accusation. His battered body was later recovered from a river in Mississippi. There was evidence that Till was seen in the company of then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother after the accusation.

The two white men were acquitted of the murder in the ensuing trial. The jury consisted entirely of whites. Both men confessed to the murder in a 1956 interview, reports say CNN America.

The kidnapping and murder of Till became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. It happened when his mother insisted on an open coffin burial in Chicago, where the Till family lived. Photos of the funeral were published in the media across the country and abroad.

false statement

More than sixty years later, Dunham said in an interview that her statement was partly a lie. Those rulings reopened the investigation into Till’s murder in 2018. The judiciary just failed to prove the lies. The investigation closed in 2021.

Dunham was 88 years old and died in Westlake, Louisiana.