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Protestors in North Carolina are on the search for Carolyn Bryant Donham. On Wednesday (July 6), dozens in Raleigh arrived to what's believed to be Donham's residence, also delivering eviction notices to the location and another address where the 88-year-old could potentially live.
“She lied on Emmett Till. Her lies and her conspiring with her husband led to the gruesome death of Emmett Till, whose death was a major spark behind the entire civil rights movement,” activist and attorney Malik Shabazztold CBS 17.
In late-June, an unserved warrant for Donham was found in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. Identifying Donham as “Mrs. Roy Bryant," the warrant, dated August 29, 1955, was found inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, according to the Associated Press.
On Thurday (July 7), protesters stormed a Raleigh senior living facility to continue their search, according to Daily Mail. Unable to locate Donham, protestors ultimately left after an unidentified woman in the facility denied that Donham lived there. Instead, the woman said that Donham lived in a nursing home, but did not share the exact facility.
In December, the US Department of Justice closed Till's 1955 case without federal charges. In August 1955, while 14-year-old Till arrived from Chicago to visit relatives in the Delta region of Mississippi, he was lynched by a violent mob of whites. The men who led the mob were Donham's now-deceased husband Roy Bryant and his accomplice J.W. Milam, who abducted Till from uncle Mose Wright’s house before torturing and killing the teenager.
As the two men were later acquitted of murder, Donham alleged that Till whistled and made advances towards her in a local grocery market, which she admitted to fabricating in a 2007 interview with The Blood of Emmett Till author Timothy B. Tyson.