Bryant, who is still alive at an undisclosed location, told the author she could not remember other details about the fleeting encounter with Till, who went into the store to buy gum. ... Roy, along with J.W. Despite her personal suffering, she was generous with her family and friends and managed to maintain many of her life-long interests. 291. This time, he succeeded his former deputy, John Ed Cothran, who had helped with the kidnapping investigation and served as a witness for the prosecution. They live in the back of the store which Roy's brothers helped set up when he got out of the 82nd Airborne in 1953. Written By Megan Sims. The marriage ended three and a half years later with Chandler’s death. In 1971, Greenville Mayor Pat Dunne declared Feb. 14-20 as National Beauty Salon Week, and Juanita served as chairwoman. Her depression had not been a part of her life prior to the notorious lynching that thrust her family into the spotlight. Wright, who left his car behind in Mississippi, never drove again after his move to Argo, but with the proximity of stores and schools, and the availability of public transportation, he didn’t need to. The photo of Wright standing and pointing at two accused killers in Sumner remains a testament to bravery in a Mississippi courtroom. In 1981, a portion of Mississippi 32 was designated as the Henry Clarence Strider Memorial Highway. In February of that year, state officials tried to keep black student James Meredith from registering at Old Miss, and the defiance of the governor, Ross Barnett, made national news. In February 1965, Strider won a special election to the state Senate, where he represented Grenada, Yalobusha and Tallahatchie counties for the next five years. When Roy, Carolyn, and the two youngest children left Louisiana in 1973 and returned to Mississippi, they relocated to Ruleville, in Sunflower County. He was there when his cousin encountered Carolyn Bryant - the young wife of a local store owner. “I’m plumb worried about the boy,” his 46-year-old father, Walter Collins, said at the time. Till entered the store and purchased bubble gum; when he left, Carolyn followed him to the door. Several months after that, William Bradford Huie interviewed the brothers for a follow-up article to his “confession” piece from a year before. Still fearing for his life in 1963, Strider declined to run for his former job yet again. Frances left the room and Hubble pulled up a chair. She’s still alive (though many other key players in the case are not). At first, he moved to St. Louis, where he had lived a few years earlier, but then moved to Dayton, Ohio, in 1957. She brought along her dog, a 16-year-old Shih Tzu, but by July 2012, the dog had died, but her son surprised Carolyn with another of the same breed. He died there in December 1968. On Thursday, Aug.t 29, 1974, local minister Macklyn Hubble received a call from Leslie’s wife, Frances. Former Soldier. “He had a sad life in a way, in his later years.” Smith’s obituary noted that he had helped with “important criminal cases” in his career, but it failed to mention the Till trial in particular. Like Till's mother and later, Carolyn Bryant, Juanita Milam experienced the death of a son, when in 2008 her eldest, Bill, died in Greenville at age 57. Two months before his death, he spoke for two hours to a reporter for the Palm Beach Post but refused to say much about the Till case. Students of the Till case remember seeing Juanita stand by her man during the trial and after the jury read the verdict. Clearly, Juanita felt at ease in her local community. I’m standing here with’a ass-pocket full of money.”. Milam would have a few run-ins with the law while living in Greenville. They were held in jail until the start of the trial. She is still alive today, living in Mississippi at 86 years old. The Milams later moved to Orange, Texas, but stayed for only a few years, returning to live near Juanita's parents in Greenville. Milam, on Aug. 28, 1955, grabbed Till from his great-uncle's home, carried him away and … He suffered not only from high blood pressure but from nose bleeds so severe that he was often admitted to the hospital, where doctors had to pack his head in ice to stop them. At about 10:30 p.m., his-half-brother Milam stopped by Bryant’s Grocery. Around 1959, he began working as a surgical orderly at Chicago’s Jackson Park Hospital and remained there for 47 years before retiring in 2006. “We only had the clothing on our backs. When the FBI investigated the case from 2004–5, Carolyn became a focus. In fact, most of his friends only learned of his role as a witness after seeing him on television in 2003. She began speaking nationally about her son after 1985. Yet Strider would have been happy to rid the Delta of its black citizens. If this seemed to hint of her first husband’s attempt to preserve the sanctity of her white womanhood, which propelled both her and him into the public eye, she was quick to add that a real man will respect others and refrain from bullying. I used an old bed spread for diapers on my 6-months-old baby. 2. He refused all requests for interviews about the Till case. “I feel like the district attorney used us as scapegoats,” said black jury member Otis Johnson. He found himself back in the courtroom on occasion after the acquittal in Sumner, but his crimes -- among them writing bad checks, assault and battery, using a stolen credit card -- were miniscule when compared to the murder charge he faced in 1955. Juanita and Carolyn saw each other, but did not speak, at the funeral of Milam and Bryant sibling Dan Milam, who died in 1999. Like Carolyn, Juanita said next to nothing publicly in the six decades after the trial. “In those days you didn’t win elections, you bought them,” he told his colleagues. Visit his website at emmetttillmurder.com. On Aug. 20, 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth from Chicago arrived in Money, Miss., by train, along with a cousin, 16-year-old Wheeler Parker Jr. She has said privately that the Emmett Till case has kept her a prisoner. He later appeared in Untold Story and on a 60 Minutes segment about the case, where he denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, the Till murder. Her name now is Carolyn Donham. Fifteen years later in February 1971, he was arrested, and four months after that, convicted of illegally possessing over 500 methamphetamine pills, popularly known as speed. Eula, whom Carolyn described as tough and outspoken, asked Carolyn in front of Roy many times why she stayed married to him. Over time, history has clouded what happened inside the shop and whether Till actually did “wolf whistle” at Bryant. Juanita died quietly on Jan. 14 in Ocean Springs, Miss., her home for the last several years. Date of Birth (DOB), Birthday: January 24, 1931. At some point in the 1960s, Juanita began working as a hairdresser at the Greenville Beauty Salon. In this 23 September 1955, file photo, JW Milam, left, and Roy Bryant, right, sit with their wives in a courtroom in Sumner, Mississippi. She and Roy Bryant divorced in 1979 and she has since remarried three times. Bryant promised to obey the law respecting food stamp regulations going forward but found himself unable to resist the temptation to repeat the same violations only a few years later. Living alone, he did the best he could but in time his eyesight began to wane, and other health problems made it difficult for him to keep up his one-bedroom apartment. A year after the trial he reported that he was working odd jobs and had even gained 13 pounds since moving to the North. Carolyn, for her part, has wanted only to live quietly, out of the spotlight. Most people visit museums not to dwell on death but to learn about what people did while alive. They married in 1976 and made their home in the Englewood area. The year before he died, Kellum insisted that for him, the Till affair was “just another case over the desk.” He said that he asked Milam and Bryant early on if they were guilty of the murder, and both denied that they were. After her divorce from Roy Bryant in 1975, she remarried at least twice. share. In this 23 September 1955, file photo, JW Milam, left, and Roy Bryant, right, sit with their wives in a courtroom in Sumner, Mississippi. Archived. Six months later on Nov. 19, Roy and Carolyn Bryant were riding as passengers in a car driven by Carolyn’s 18-year-old brother, James Holloway, in Greenville, when they were involved in a head-on collision at about 1:45 a.m. Clark Porteous of the Memphis Press-Scimitar said that Juanita appeared "shocked by the proceedings," and he described her as a "sad-faced woman." During the 1955 trial, Carolyn Bryant said Juanita had been in the Bryant's apartment behind the store the night Emmett Till came in, where she was babysitting the Bryant and Milam children. One time while home alone he lost his balance and fell. Carolyn Donham Still Alive . Roy married Vera Jo Orman, an accountant at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, in May 1980. Any profiteering off Emmett Till's blood apparently backfired in the end, however. She learned American Sign Language and became very proficient at it so that she could communicate with her daughter. She turned 84 years old in July 2018 and has, for decades, been a devoted mother and grandmother and enjoys a close relationship with her family. Around that time, Huie interviewed the brothers for a follow-up article that also appeared in Look. The two men who murdered Till, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. His defense attorney was J.W. That night at the store, however, Carolyn went to a car that she said belonged to Juanita, to get a gun. Henry Lee Loggins was another black man whose name has been tied to the case as an unwilling accomplice. The director of the Washington County welfare department would not confirm or deny the Post report, but Milam adamantly declared it false. Carolyn Donham Greenville Mississippi . That evening, Bryant, with a black man named J. W. Washington, approached a black teenager walking along a road. He died in Dayton in October 2009. Strider expressed his opinion that Till "is still alive." John W. Miliam (l.) and his half-brother Roy Bryant (c.), 24 , were acquitted of the murder. Like Sheriff Smith, Strider was a hunter. When asked about this, Juanita denied being there. He was finally able to rent 217 acres in Sunflower County with the help of his brother-in-law and secured $4,000 to plant cotton from a Tallahatchie County bank where one of his defense attorneys, John Whitten, sat on the loan committee. Even her mother-in-law, Eula Bryant, saw it. In 2004, the United States Department of Justice reopened the case amid reports that other people, some still alive, had participated in Emmett Till’s murder. After their return to Mississippi, the Bryants managed to continue a low-profile existence, despite living in close proximity to the land of the Till murder. When the divorce was finalized two months later on Oct. 28, 1975, sole custody went to Carolyn. "They contributed to my defense fund — at least they say they did. When the murder trial of Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. The widowed Carolyn soon married again, this time to former Leland police officer David Donham. He reflected on how the tide had turned, saying his wife and children were having an especially hard time. He reemerged for interviews in 1999. J.W. Being sought in connection with the slaying is Mrs. Roy Bryant, at … She thought this wild story would make Roy take care of the store instead of leavin' her with the kids and the store. They both plead innocent. Juanita stormed out of the service after Milam and Bryant family members became involved in a confrontation over blame in Emmett Till’s death. He rarely talked about the case. More than one photographer in Sumner captured her smiles as her husband was set free. Chatham returned to private practice in Hernando, Mississippi, but on Oct. 9, 1956, he came home after speaking at an event, took a nap, and later that evening died of a massive heart attack. after the trial, or the 33 she lived after his death were marked by pain, sadness, regret, or guilt, only those who were the closest to her might know. Reminiscent of his actions in his most famous dirty deed, Bryant had no trouble taking the law into his own hands and threatened to do so. Carolyn Bryant is perhaps frozen in memory as the 21-year-old local beauty working behind a counter in a country store where Emmett Till fatefully crossed her path in 1955. Three years later the same court fined him $300 and sentenced him to 60 days in jail for using a stolen credit card. A Northerner unfamiliar with Southern etiquette, he then waved, said "goodbye" (not "goodbye, ma'am"), and, according to family members, directed a wolf-whistle at the young white woman. Posted by. No divorce record for the couple exists in Washington County where they lived. https://usslave.blogspot.com/2011/07/preserving-historic-emmett-till.html A casket is an unusual item to display in a museum. Today there is still a need to witness how racism plagues the nation. When Roy told him he planned to “whip the n—–,” Milam readily agreed to help. He stopped at Roy Bryant's general store in Money, 20 miles south of Glendora, where he was alone for a moment with Bryant's young wife, Carolyn. The case that brought him worldwide notoriety in 1955 was to him, “just something in the past. The four-paragraph article in the Delta Democrat–Times reporting the accident mentioned nothing of the Bryants’ notoriety in the Till case, although the Chicago Defender shortly learned of the story and reported that fact. However, Frank Bryant’s death took a toll on her and the project stalled. In February 1966, he co-sponsored a bill to relocate Mississippi blacks to other states, as a new farm bill was making it harder for laborers to earn a living. Advertisement. “I believed them,” he insisted, “just like I would if I was interrogating a client now. The truth of what actually happened may never be known, but one of those three crimes was enough to prompt husband Roy Bryant and half brother J. W. Milan to kidnap Emmett from the home of his Great Uncle Moses. In 1979, he sat for an interview, alongside civil rights activist Amzie Moore, for the PBS series, Eyes on the Prize. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease since the late 1980s and died in February 2003. Eula died in August 1974. Juanita's only known public statements about the Till case following the trial occurred when the FBI came knocking after the federal government reopened the case in 2004. Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. Milam, he left Mississippi. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant’s “aunts and uncles murdered Emmett Till,” claims a recent comment on the Deep South Voice Facebook page. They remained in Ruleville. Carolyn And Roy Bryant Children . He was just a boy. He shares five enduring myths about the Till case. Less than a month after the verdict, journalist William Bradford Huie offered to pay the brothers $3,150 for their story. Two months after Frank’s death, Carolyn put her home in Greenville up for sale and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to live with her surviving son. Sort by. Bryant returned to court for sentencing two months later, and through the pleadings of his attorney, he was given only three years probation and ordered to pay a $750 fine. When Vera Jo Bryant died in May 2012, her obituary mentioned nothing about her marriage to Roy, and only listed her parents and a brother as family members who had preceded her in death. The Till murder would change their lives forever. In October 1983, Bryant was indicted on five counts of food stamp fraud, pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for a December trial. “That’s something you never put out of your mind. Adjusting to the big city after spending a lifetime in the rural Mississippi Delta was not easy. Her mother worked as a nurse while her father managed a plantation in the segregated town. Carolyn Bryant was born in Indianola, Mississippi, in 1934. The couple stayed together till Roy’s last breath. 2. He said that he paid out a total of $30,000 for blank absentee ballots reserved for people who had indicated they would not be present on Election Day. In the accompanying photographs, both men look happy, but it was obvious the smiles were only a facade. 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