The federal government has reopened an investigation into the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till based on information published in a Duke professor’s book.
While researching his 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” Timothy Tyson interviewed Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who said Till sexually assaulted her while she was working at a grocery store in Mississippi.
Her story led to the black teen’s lynching, and influenced jurors to acquit the murderers. She later admitted to Tyson her testimony was not true.
“And she also said, in her words, 'nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,'" Tyson said.
The U.S. Department of Justice cites the “discovery of new information” as the reason for reopening the case.
Till’s murder helped spark the Civil Rights movement of the mid-twentieth-century.
