The US Department of Justice announced Monday, December 6 that it had closed an emblematic investigation into the murder, in the 1950s, of a black teenager who had become a symbol of the struggle for civil rights. Family members of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black teenager kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1955 in the segregationist state of Mississippi, met with ministry officials who told them of their decision.
“I'm not surprised, but my heart is broken,”
her cousin Thelma Wright Edwards, 90, said afterwards.
"Nothing is settled and we must continue to move forward,"
she added during a press briefing.
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66 years ago, Emmett Till, originally from Chicago, visited family members in the southern state.
A white woman, Carolyn Bryant, had assured that he had whistled her and had tried to "grope" her.
As a result of his accusations, the teenager was abducted.
His body was found 72 hours later in a river.
Emmett Till's mother had demanded that his coffin be left open at his funeral, so that the world could see the abuse he had endured.
The photos of the mutilated body had gone down in history.
Arrested for the murder, Roy Bryant - Carolyn Bryant's husband - and JW Milam, her half-brother, had been acquitted by an all-white jury.
Protected by this verdict, the two white men then told a magazine how they had killed the teenager.
They are now deceased.
The Justice Department reopened the investigation in 2004, but was unable to prosecute due to the statute of limitations.
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In 2017, the author of a book devoted to the case assured that Carolyn Bryant had confessed to him that he had never been assaulted by the boy. The Justice Department then reopened the case, but her investigators were unable to determine whether she had invented her assault or not. During an interrogation with the federal police,
"she denied going back on her
initial
testimony
", according to a
press
release from the ministry.
"While closing the investigation without charge, the government does not say that the testimony of this woman in 1955 was true, serious doubts remain on her version of events"
which was contradicted by other witnesses, adds the ministry.
But, according to him, there is not
"sufficient evidence"
to prosecute her.
