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'Forgiveness Is Not Easy': The Blood of Emmett Till and the New Investigation of His Murder

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The federal government has reopened its investigation into the slaying of Emmett Till, the black teenager brutally killed by two white men in Mississippi in 1955.
 
The Justice Department submitted a report to Congress in late March to renew its investigation "based upon the discovery of new information" from a 2017 book titled The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson.
 
The book quotes a white woman, Carolyn Donham, who admitted during a 2008 interview that she wasn't truthful when she testified more than 60 years ago.
 
Her original claim was that 14-year-old Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances toward her, and that claim had inspired two men to kidnap and murder Till.
 
Before he died, Till's younger cousin, Simeon Wright, sat down for an interview with CBN News in 2010 to recount the horrible day.
 
"At the age of 12, imagine going to sleep at night and waking up the next day and your whole world is upside down," Wright said.
 
Till had traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to visit Wright that summer. They were sleeping in the same room when two men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, showed up at their home and kidnapped Till.
 
Bryant owned the country store where Till and his cousins had stopped to buy candy a few days earlier.    
 
Wright told CBN News, "Emmett and I, we were in the store together, and we had walked out of the store. Mrs. Bryant came out behind us, and she was walking towards her car and Emmett whistled at her and it scared us half to death."
 
Wright said the whistling at Carolyn Bryant, who was quoted in Tyson's 2017 book, was a joke to Till who was always trying to make his cousins laugh.
 
Wright said Till didn't understand the unspoken rules of the segregated south.  
 
"Color didn't mean anything to him," Wright told CBN News in 2010. "You are a human being. We are all the same. So, he grew up like that."
 
Till's body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River tied to a cotton gin.  
 
An all-white jury found Milam and Bryant not guilty in the murder trial, and there was never a trial for the kidnapping.
 
"I was enraged and embittered by the verdict," Wright said. "I saw for the first time the evil that was in the heart of the segregationists."
 
Wright said he turned to alcohol early in his adulthood until something unexpected happened one night at a Chicago bar. 
 
"At age 22, God forgave me of my sins," Wright said. "That is what changed me really. When I was sitting in this tavern and I heard the voice of the Lord say, 'If you die in your sins you are going to hell.' Man, I tell you, my life wasn't the same again."
 
That voice inspired him to forgive the men responsible for the death of his cousin.  
 
"Forgiveness is something that is not easy," Wright said. "Just because I said that it wasn't an easy process. It is an act of your will, you have to do it and then fight through it. And then the deliverance comes."
 
Wright says he has also forgiven Carolyn Bryant for testifying that Till did more than just whistle.
 
"I feel if I met her, she probably could repent of what she did," Wright said. "I think she wants to. But she probably doesn't know how."
 
Investigators say the woman's lies revealed in Tyson's book on what really happened have called them to reexamine the entire case.
 
The book's author told reporters that he was contacted by the FBI weeks after his book was published in January 2017, and he handed over all interview recordings and research materials.

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