Posted on 12/03/2022 4:08:06 PM PST by kaintucky
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Home News Next Up NEXT UP SLIDE SHOW: Protest, threat disrupt Bowling Green SLIDE SHOW: Protest, threat disrupt Bowling Green Protesters converge on BG, seeking woman tied to 1955 lynching By DON SERGENT dsergent@bgdailynews.com 1 hr ago Click here to sign up to receive each day's headlines via email
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Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Copy article link Save If civil rights activists who came to Bowling Green from multiple states on Saturday wanted to get attention, they succeeded.
If they wanted to achieve their aim of seeing the arrest of a woman who touched off the infamous lynching of Emmett Till in 1955, they will have to wait.
The protest, though, did lead to a disruption for Bowling Green residents because of what law enforcement officials called a credible threat of violence against the planned protest. As a result both the Miracle on College Street Mile road race and the Jaycees Christmas Parade were cancelled Saturday morning.
Private security was guarding the main entrance to the Ashton Parc apartment complex where the woman the activists were searching for – Carolyn Bryant Donham – reportedly lives, and about two dozen officers from both Bowling Green Police and the Warren County Sheriff’s Office were out in force at nearby Big Lots.
Some three dozen protesters – members of the T.H.U.G. (True Healing Under God) civil rights organization, some New Black Panthers members armed with military-style rifles, and other organizations – congregated around noon in the parking lot of Big Lots on Scottsville Road, hoping to gain access to the adjacent Ashton Parc on Shive Lane.
About 15 protestors and an equal number of spectators gathered at the Warren County Justice Center downtown before joining the others near Big Lots, where the group eventually spilled over onto Shive Lane and briefly blocked Scottsville Road.
Impassioned speakers at both sites called for the arrest of Donham, now 88 and reportedly in poor health, because of her role in Till’s death.
In 1955, then-Carolyn Bryant was living in Money, Miss., and working at the family grocery store. She claimed at that time that 14-year-old Till, who lived in Chicago and was visiting cousins in Mississippi, whistled at her when he came into the store. Her account of what Till did, or didn’t do, has varied over the years.
Days later, Till was abducted from a relative’s home, brutally tortured and killed. His body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River.
Donham’s then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were charged with murder, but an all-white jury quickly acquitted them. The two men, however, later confessed to the crimes in a magazine interview.
Till has long been an icon of the civil rights movement, but more attention has been brought to the case recently, largely due to a new movie, “Till,” about the case.
Earlier this year, an old arrest warrant for Donham, charging her with kidnapping, was found in a Mississippi courthouse.
That prompted T.H.U.G. and other organizations to attempt to locate Donham.
The Mississippi Attorney General’s office has said the state will not be prosecuting Donham because there is no new evidence in the case, but that hasn’t stopped T.H U.G. founder John Barnett from pursuing her.
“Five months ago, we were in Raleigh, N.C. looking for her,” Barnett said during a Friday-evening stop at the Warren County Justice Center. “I later found out through a news reporter that she was in Bowling Green.
“The Department of Justice closed the case in December of last year, but the warrant was found a few months later. We’re here to send a message to the Department of Justice that we have a warrant.”
Priscilla Sterling, cousin of Emmett Till and head of the Emmett Till Justice for Families Foundation, said at the Justice Center that people “have no idea what our family has gone through.”
She said Donham has been protected by a system of white supremacy.
“We want (Donham) brought to justice, brought to trial,” she said.
Barnett, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., said his group is continuing to plead with the office of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch to execute the 67-year-old warrant.
“A reporter asked me if I didn’t feel sorry for an elderly woman,” Barnett said. “I don’t care if she’s 97 years old; she needs to go to jail.”
E. Faye Williams, president of the Washington, D.C.,-based Dick Gregory Society and one of the protestors who came to Bowling Green, expressed similar thoughts.
“Some people may think that because this (Till’s murder) happened a long time ago that we should just forget it,” Williams said. “But no. It’s always a good time for justice.
“I’m here today working for justice for the family of Emmett Till.”
The protest at Big Lots was briefly interrupted when one member of the New Black Panthers was arrested by Bowling Green Police on an outstanding warrant from Ohio.
Barnett seized on the arrest, saying it was an example of what should be done to Donham.
The Warren County Regional Jail website showed no record of the arrest by Saturday afternoon, and Barnett said he didn’t know the man’s full name, but he still used him as an example.
“He has an outstanding warrant, like Carolyn Bryant Donham,” he said. “This is what they should be doing to her.”
Although Saturday’s protest didn’t yield the result he was hoping for, Barnett promised that Bowling Green hasn’t seen the last of him and his fellow activists as long as Donham is living here.
“We’ll be back,” he said. “We’re going to
That is definitely NOT a drawing of Harriet Tubman! She was undoubtedly a brave and accomplished woman, but have you ever seen a photo of her? She was harder to look at than a close up of Stacy Abrams’ bare behind!
UHHHGLYYY!!!
Seems the photos of Tubman are when she is older.
Irony and Modern Black American Ignorance...the NRA was founded by Union Civil War Veterans to train freed slaves in the use of firearms so they could protect themselves against Southern White Racists/KKK. True.
Try telling that to BLM, or White Lib, moron racists.
I respect Harriet Tubman very much, but years alone don’t make anyone as non-comely (kindly way of it) as she. Nature, G-D, or the Devil, maybe all three, had a significant hand in it. But it matters not in the least. It’s not her beauty she’s remembered for, it’s her courage and character.
T.H.U.G.S? No. Monsters.
Dont forget Stagecoach Mary...
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