Tyson Cautiously Welcomes Revived Till Investigation

The reopening of one of the United States’ most notorious cases of racial killings, one that helped spark the civil rights movement, may be attributed to a book by Duke professor Timothy Tyson.

In Tyson’s 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose accusation that in Till grabbed her and made vulgar remarks led to his death in 1955, confessed to Tyson “that never happened.” 

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” Donham told Tyson, a senior research scholar at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. 

Now, the Justice Department has notified Congress it has revived the case, citing “the discovery of new information,” according to media reports. The report does not indicate what that new information is, according to The Associated Press.

Tyson believes the information in his book led to the reopening of the Till case.

On Thursday, after The Associated Press, New York Times and others reported the reopening of the case, Tyson found himself in the media spotlight, fielding dozens of media interviews from outlets including NBC News, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, CBS News and BBC.

He told reporters Thursday during a news conference at Duke that he shared his research materials after getting a call from the FBI several weeks after his book was released, and again weeks later after getting a subpoena.

“I fully support the investigation, I just don’t think there’s anything there,” Tyson said, telling reporters he was uncertain what charges could still be legally filed a half-century later. 

While expressing hope for the investigation, Tyson also questioned the motives for the action. He blasted the Trump administration, saying President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions were using the case as political cover to counter harsh criticism “for their white nationalist race politics,” including the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border and their support for weakening minority voting rights.

He said it’s “hypocritical” that’s Sessions and Trump would “appear to care about a black boy murdered in 1955.”

“I just think it’s a show,” he added.

However, a reporter questioned Tyson’s assertion about the Department of Justice’s motives, noting that The Associated Press found the details about the reopened case this week in a paragraph on page 18 of an annual report given to Congress in March, without any fanfare. 

Still, Tyson said he is “deeply suspicious” of why the department would reopen the case.

Till, 14, was found with his skull smashed in, one ear clipped and a broken femur. His mother famously kept her son’s casket open because she wanted all of America “to see what they did to my boy.”

In August 1955, Till, from Chicago, was visiting family in Money, Mississippi, when he went to a store owned by Donham and her then husband, Roy Bryant. For his alleged actions, Till was kidnapped and killed days later. His body was tethered to a cotton gin fan with barbed wire and then cast into a river.

Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were charged with murder but acquitted. They later confessed to the crime in an interview; both are dead.  

Tyson said he hoped the action would promote further discussion of the murder, which he said was a transformative moment in U.S. history. Till’s death was among “thousands” of racially motivated killings of the era, but it stood out for the activism that followed. In the wake of the killing, African-Americans in Till’s native Chicago built the infrastructure that within the year launched the national civil rights movement. 

That legacy remains strong, Tyson said. To this day, he said, people chant Till’s name in the streets when protesting for civil rights.

Tyson also shared details of his 2008 interview with Donham, now in her mid-80s, who lives in Raleigh.

Tyson said his interview with her happened after Donham’s daughter-in-law called him to say she enjoyed his book, “Blood Done Sign My Name.” The woman said he might like to meet with her mother-in-law, and told Tyson it was Donham. 

Tyson recalled they met over coffee and pound cake, and that Donham seemed to be “in a sorrowful state of mind” when she talked about what happened to Till. The conversation, he said, “took a confessional tone” when she said Till could never have deserved what happened to him.

Tyson emphasized that the most important result of his book is underscoring how Till’s death galvanized the civil rights movement.

“I think the most important question,” he said, “is why has this case has been a burr on America’s brain for 60 years or more.”