If you have problems with high blood pressure, you might want to do a few deep breaths before reading this. In a new book by Timothy Dyson titled The Blood of Emmett Till, the author reveals a bombshell fact about the case surrounding the 14-year-old boy’s murder in Mississippi: the woman made up the most damning parts of her testimony.
In a new book about the historical murder, the author tracks down Carolyn Bryant, who testified that the young boy had physically and verbally assaulted her. In a Vanity Fair piece about the upcoming book:
Timothy Tyson, a Duke University senior research scholar, reveals that Carolyn—in 2007, at age 72—confessed that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her testimony. “That part’s not true,” she told Tyson, about her claim that Till had made verbal and physical advances on her. As for the rest of what happened that evening in the country store, she said she couldn’t remember. (Carolyn is now 82, and her current whereabouts have been kept secret by her family.
This is infuriating on many levels. The young boy was kidnapped and murdered. His killers were acquitted and later made $3,000 from confessing to the crime in a magazine. A young Black boy lost his life, his killers literally made money off of it, and the woman fabricated the story that triggered these series of events.
Must be nice to be able to live the rest of your life in hiding with a young man’s blood on your hands. I don’t know how she lives with herself.