Carolyn Bryant is dead at 88.

Who is Carolyn Bryant? She died Tuesday in Westlake, Louisiana. It is doubtful that all but a few Americans know her name. It can be argued, however, that she is, indirectly, one of the most influential Americans in modern times. It can be argued that she catalyzed a major and resonant movement in our country that is deeply woven into our country’s tapestry. Her contribution, it can be argued, was indispensable. Carolyn Bryant had no intention to start a movement of any kind. She could have had no idea that her actions would launch a flame that rages to this day, and will continue to rage. She started a huge machinery into motion.
Carolyn Bryant woke up one morning in 1955 in the very small town of Money, Mississippi and went to work in the small family store. She was just 21, married with children, and she didn’t realize that this was to be the day that would define her for the rest of her life. It was the day that a naive 14 year old African American boy named Emmett Till was to enter the Bryant General store owned by she and her husband Roy Bryant. It was the day that Carolyn would encounter young Emmett as he was buying candy and claim that he, on a trip from his home in Chicago to visit his uncle and cousins, had made inappropriate gestures in her direction; gestures that included a whistle from his mouth as he left the store and headed back to his uncles truck. Carolyn’s husband Roy was out of town for a few days but when he returned she recounted to him an account of that exchange. Roy told his brother JW Millam and the rest is bloody history. A few days later Roy and JW went to the house of Emmett’s uncle and cousin at about 2 in the morning and, with pistols in hand, kidnapped young Emmett and put him in the back of a pick up truck where they drove him to a nearby structure owned by JW. Emmett was strung up by the rafters, interrogated and beaten beyond recognition with the butt of a pistol. He was tortured well into the night and then shot in the head. He was then tied to a a heavy piece of farming equipment with some barbed wire and dumped into the Talahatchie river sometime near dawn. His body was recovered 3 days later by a fisherman who saw a foot coming out of the water.
JW Millam and Roy Bryant were charged with the kidnapping and went to trial in the late summer of 1955. Emmett’s overwhelmed mother, Mamie, attended the trial which had an all white, all male jury. The two defendants were acquitted of all charges, even of the obvious kidnapping. It was a fast acquittal. Bryant and Millam confessed to the crime of murder and kidnapping 6 months later . Life magazine offered them both money to speak the truth of the events. JW Millam and Roy Brant got their money and LIFE magazine got the information they were seeking. No one received justice. Both men knew that they could not be tried again for the same crime. They were free as birds with more money than before after brutally lynching a child. It was the sign of the times; heinous crimes against the black community with impunity.
Carolyn Bryant was never charged for any conspiratorial role in the crimes although several indictments against her regarding this crime have been considered and dismissed; even one as recently as two years ago.

Carolyn Bryant may have started the dominoes on this event but it would also require the incredible and courageous decision of Emmett’s mother, Mamie, to burn the injustice, the institutional injustice, into the minds of many across the globe in 1955. Mamie resisted efforts by local Mississippi officials to have the body buried quickly in a local plot. Mamie insisted on bringing the body back to Chicago and against the efforts of the local mortician, Mamie insisted on seeing the body of her son. She was told not to open the casket but she was a mother, determined to see her dead son. She was not prepared for the grotesque and horrific condition of her son’s face. It was totally unrecognizable. Large parts of the skull were missing. His teeth were mostly gone and his right eye was dangling below his eyelid. “Where were his teeth?”, shrieked Mamie. “He had such beautiful teeth.” The whole head was swollen and misshapen. She invited Jet magazine to photograph the body in detail and she then, in a decision that would resonate across the world, insisted on an open casket funeral in Chicago. “I want everyone to see what they have done to my son”. It was reported that over 100,000 people passed young Emmett’s lynched 14 year old body that day in the church; many crumbled at the sight. It was overwhelming. It made international news.

Not too far away in Montgomery, Alabama Rosa Parks heard of the gruesome death of Emmett Till. She, too, saw the photos in Jet magazine. She would never be the same. She later claimed that the lynching of Emmett Till gave her the courage she needed. Two months later she decided to display an act of profound and unprecedented civil disobedience by refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery civic bus line. She was arrested and cited. Her arrest was the direct spark for the Montgomery Bus boycott which went on for an amazing 13 months. A 25 year old unknown minister named Martin Luther King organized the Montgomery bus boycott. This was his first venture into civil rights activism; before this he was a local minister. This was virtually the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in America: Ground Zero. There was no organized movement prior to the events on that bus on that day. During this boycott black citizens refused to ride the bus to carry out their daily activities. This was a great hardship for the black community of Montgomery but it also was a significant financial loss for the city as the busline was the main form of transportation for black citizens in Montgomery. After over a year the city abandoned enforcing discrimination practices on public buses. Rosa, Martin, and the boycott had won victory.

If Rosa Parks hadn’t acted on what she had digested about the lynching of Emmett Till then there would have been no bus boycott…and very likely no launching of the civil rights activism by Martin Luther king.

Carolyn Bryant was the last surviving member of that dark event of 1955. Her husband Roy and brother in law JW died decades prior. Mamie Till died over 15 year ago. Carolyn died alone in a small town in Louisiana. She had been living a reclusive life since the events in Money, often avoiding attempts by the media for an interview.
If Carolyn had not reacted the way she did to her exchange with Emmett Till; if she had not recounted it (her account has been challenged by numerous sources) to her husband Roy, well, we may never have heard of Martin Luther King. He may have been a below the radar minister in Alabama for his entire life. This certainly means that legislatively this country would have had no civil rights act of 1964 and no Voting Rights act of 1965. We can only imagine how much our country would have been different without Carolyn, Roy, JW, Emmett, and Mamie.
Carolyn Bryant is dead at 88.