America Already Believed Emmett Till's Story Was a Lie; Still, His Accuser's Confession Matters

It's been more than 60 years since Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black teen from Chicago, was brutally beaten and lynched after flirting with a white woman while visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta.Now comes welcome news, in a book coming out this week, that his accuser has recanted the most incendiary parts of her claims against him. Carolyn Bryant Donham told author Timothy B. Tyson that her long-ago allegations that Emmett grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her, "that part is not true."How a woman at the center of one of the nation's most heinous tragedies, which helped propel the civil rights movement, could withhold this vital information for so long is beyond us. She's 82 now. Maybe she was trying to relieve her conscience.Whatever the reason, Donham's recanting all these years later is important.  Continue reading...