Pursuit of Donham finally over
As word spread last week that Carolyn Bryant Donham had died, some of those who had been pushing for her to face criminal charges in the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till were not shy about voicing their disappointment.
“Carolyn Bryant’s legacy will be one of dishonesty and injustice,” said Malik Z. Shabazz, who earlier this year filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Till relative trying to compel Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks to serve a 68-year-old arrest warrant that was null. “A legacy that verifies that Mississippi coddles and protects white supremacy.”
Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, accused Donham of trying to protect those who murdered Till, including her ex-husband, her entire adult life. “While the world saw the horrors of racism, and the real consequences of hatred, what the world will never see is remorse or responsibility for Emmett’s death,” Weems said.
And Keith Beauchamp, the filmmaker whose documentary on Till’s brutal slaying helped prompt the federal reopening of the investigation almost 20 years ago, captured the disappointment most succinctly. “Damn, damn, damn,” he told a reporter after learning of Donham’s death. “... The good old American judicial system has failed us once again.”
The crusade to put Donham behind bars often seemed, however, more motivated by vengeance than justice. Twice the FBI looked into the case, and twice it concluded there were no federal charges to bring against Donham. Twice the evidence against her was presented to racially mixed grand juries in Leflore County, and they concluded that there was insufficient evidence to indict her either for Till’s killing or his kidnapping. Still, that did not end the hounding to which Donham was subjected for the last decades of her life.
Donham was no heroine, that’s for certain. From the time of the lynching, she gave inconsistent and factually dubious accounts of her fatal interchange with Till in her store and of the last time she saw him a few days later. There was speculation — never proven, though — that she was in the vehicle that snatched Till at gunpoint away from his great-uncle’s home in Money, and that she identified him to her murderous husband and brother-in-law as the Black teenager who had been fresh with her.
But speculation does not a criminal case make. Even if it had been Donham in the vehicle, prosecutors would still have had to prove that she was a willing participant in the kidnapping or that she knew her positive identification of Till equated to a death sentence.
Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam got away with a terrible injustice, one so egregious that it helped galvanize the civil rights movement. Because of the segregationist social customs of the time, the two white men were able to kill a Black 14-year-old with impunity, knowing that no all-white, all-male jury in Mississippi was going to convict them for enforcing a taboo that said Black men were to stay away from white women.
Letting Bryant and Milam get away with their brutal crime was horrendous. But it would not have been right either to try to make Donham pay for their sins or for those of a white supremacist era by putting her on trial in her 80s.
The lust for vengeance, however, was seemingly unquenchable. It didn’t matter that she spent the last years of her life mostly in hiding, or that she had terminal cancer. The only thing that would end the pursuit of her was her death.
And that’s what it ultimately took.
Tim Kalich
Greenwood Commonwealth
A bad audition for presidency
Though he has not officially announced that he’s running yet, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a serious candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Right now he is the most credible threat to Donald Trump’s ambition of being the party’s candidate for a third straight time.
And yet, DeSantis too often has been unable to get out of his own way on the issues. The most obvious example is his ongoing feud with The Walt Disney Co. over its criticism of the Florida so-called “don’t say gay” law, which limits how teachers can discuss issues of gender and sex with younger students.
DeSantis retaliated against Disney’s objections by getting the Legislature to replace the company’s “special taxing district,” established by the state in 1967. The district gave Disney total control over the large area that today makes up the Disney World complex. But under the new law, the board of the new organization would be appointed by the governor, and was certain to pick fights.
Going after Disney was a strange way for DeSantis to put his presidential qualifications on display. It makes him look like a mean-spirited bully — which is exactly how his opponents and critics have described him — instead of the leader of a thriving state who is about to ask American voters to consider him for the world’s most powerful job.
DeSantis taking on Disney is comparable to Mississippi retaliating politically against its largest employer, Ingalls Shipbuilding; or Pike County ignoring one of its economic mainstays like the McComb hospital or Sanderson Farms Inc. It’s counterproductive. Nobody wins.
The Florida story just won’t go away. A few weeks ago, as befits one of the largest companies in America, Disney’s lawyers figured out a way around the state’s plans to wrest control from the company. They had the outgoing special taxing district board transfer its authority to the company, meaning Disney would be able to keep making decisions about its property.
When the new board, appointed by DeSantis, voted to reject the transfer of authority to the company, Disney filed a lawsuit, claiming with obvious merit that the state is punishing the company for exercising its free speech rights.
On Monday, The Washington Post reported that the new special taxing district board voted to respond with a lawsuit of its own against Disney. Which is too bad, because somebody needs to take a deep breath and calm this down.
Disney is the state’s largest employer, and the company’s arrival in Orlando transformed Central Florida. Disney World won’t relocate, and it will thrive long after DeSantis has left office. So what are the merits of changing its oversight after a 50-year record of growth and success?
Further, since when has a Republican candidate with national ambition so eagerly tried to punish a private business?
DeSantis got his law passed, but he and his minions continue to act like sore winners. This is a lousy audition for the presidency.
Jack Ryan,
Enterprise-Journal
