Some Places Never Change

Fifty-two years ago a little black kid in Mississippi wolf-whistled
at a white woman. That whistle caused the black kid his life.
The woman who pointed him out was never prosecuted in
the case until 2006. The end results are in the article below.
Feel free to comment and express your opinion.

A grand jury that looked into the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till -- a black teenager who was killed after he whistled at a white woman in the Mississippi Delta -- has refused to indict her, all but closing the books on a crime that galvanized the civil rights movement.

The district attorney in rural Leflore County had sought a manslaughter charge against Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was suspected of pointing out Till to her husband to mete out punishment for what was then a grave offense in the segregated South.
But the grand jury last Friday issued a ''no bill,'' meaning it found insufficient evidence, according to documents made public Tuesday.

Federal authorities decided last year not to press charges, saying the statute of limitations for federal charges had run out. Mississippi authorities represented the last, best chance to prosecute.
Till, a 14-year-old boy visiting from Chicago, was kidnapped from his uncle's home in the town of Money and shot and beaten after he wolf-whistled at Donham, a shopkeeper at the Bryant Grocery & Meat Market.

Three days later, his mutilated body was found in the muddy Tallahatchie River, weighted down with a cotton gin fan. His left eye was missing, and his right eye was dangling on his cheek. The body was identified only by a ring he was wearing.
His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003, held an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and a photograph of Till's disfigured face in Jet Magazine had a powerful effect on public opinion, letting the world see what was happening in the South.

Roy Bryant, Donham's husband, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury in 1955. The two men later confessed in an interview with Look magazine. Both are now dead.
The FBI reopened the case in 2004 but decided in 2006 not to press charges. The case was turned over to local prosecutors, with the FBI suggesting they take a closer look at Donham. Some witnesses said a woman's voice could be heard at the scene of the abduction.

Simeon Wright, 64, a black man who was in the store that day with his cousin Emmett and said he heard the wolf-whistle, got the news from the FBI on Tuesday.
''You're looking at Mississippi,'' he told The Associated Press. ''I guess it's about the same way it was 50 years ago. We had overwhelming evidence, and they came back with the same decision. Some of the people haven't changed from 50 years ago. Same attitude. The evidence speaks for itself.''

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