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DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2017
VOLUME 96 - NUMBER 5
TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 50 CENTS
Key Till witness gave false
testimony, historian says
By Hillel Italie
NEW YORK (AP) - The
woman at the center of the trial
of Emmett Till’s alleged kill
ers has acknowledged that she
falsely testified he made physical
and verbal threats, according to a
new book.
Historian Timothy B. Tyson
told The Associated Press on
Jan. 28 that Carolyn Donham
broke her long public silence in
an interview with him in 2008.
His book, “The Blood of Emmett
Till,” comes out next week.
“She told me that ’Nothing
Greensboro civil rights museum
halfway to paying off loan
GREENSBORO (AP) - A civil rights museum in
Greensboro has cut in half the amount it would owe the
city on a $700,000 loan if it can’t raise enough money by
next year.
Greensboro City Manager Jim Westmoreland told the
News & Record of Greensboro that the International Civil
Rights Center & Museum has raised $370,000.
The city lent the museum $1.5 million in 2013 to cover
debt used to renovate the old Woolworth’s building where
a major lunch counter sit-in in 1960 helped spark protests
across the South.
Greensboro has agreed to pay off a dollar for each dol
lar the museum raises to pay off the loan.
Museum co-founder Earl Jones says a golf tournament
and telethon is planned for this year. He thinks the mu
seum can raise all the money.
Georgia city police chief,
mayor apologize for 1940
lynching
LAGRANGE, Ga. (A?) - In an emotional ceremony, the mayor
and the police chief of a west Georgia city have apologized for the
lynching of a black man more than 75 years ago.
LaGrange Police Chief Lou Dekmar said the killing of Austin Cal
laway, who was taken from the city jail by a band of armed white
men in 1940, should never have happened.
Callaway was 18 when he was led from his basement cell in the
LaGrange City Hall, then shot and left to die along a road on Sept.
7, 1940. He had been arrested that day, accused of assaulting a white
woman.
Dekmar told a gathering of blacks and whites packing a Methodist
church in LaGrange that police that day had failed to protect Cal
laway in custody and failed afterward to investigate the killing, the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported (http://on-ajc.com/2kbqJf0 ).
“I sincerely regret and denounce the role our police department
played in Austin’s lynching - both through our action and inaction.
For that I am profoundly sorry,” Dekmar added.
The police chief was joined by LaGrange Mayor Jim Thornton
and others in making the apology as relatives of Callaway listened,
the LaGrange Daily News reported (http://bit.ly/2jdHUgE ).
“Let me say this emphatically: justice failed Austin Callaway in
1940,” Thornton said, addng no one was ever held accountable. “Un
til we have a full, complete acknowledgement of the past, we can
never fully heal.”
Deborah Tatum, whose grandfather was a cousin of Calloway’s
grandfather, was among family members present.
“It’s exciting to know that he finally has a voice,” she said.
A historical marker for Austin Callaway is to be dedicated on
March 18 in the area close to the state line with Alabama.
The nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, which announced plans last
year to build a memorial to African-American lynching victims in
nearby Montgomery, Alabama, said its research shows more than
4,000 blacks were killed by lynching in about a dozen Southern states
between 1877 and 1950. The nonprofit’s director, Bryan Stevenson,
has said lynchings - whether by gunshots, hanging, burnings or other
forms of killing - were regularly used in that era to terrorize black
communities.
that boy did could ever justify
what happened to him,’” said Ty
son, a Duke University research
scholar whose previous books
include “Blood Done Sign My
Name” and “Radio Free Dixie.”
Emmett Till was a 14-year-
old black tortured and killed in
1955 in Mississippi after alleg
edly whistling at a white woman,
then known as Carolyn Bryant.
His murder became national
news, was a galvanizing event
in the civil rights movement and
has been the subject of numer
ous books and movies. During
the trial, Bryant said that he had
grabbed her, and, in profane
terms, bragged about his history
with white woman. The jury was
not present when she testified.
Donham’s then-husband,
Roy Bryant, and his half brother,
J.W. Milam, were acquitted by
the all-white jury. Both men,
who later told Look magazine
they did murder Till, have since
died. Milam’s widow, Juanita
Milam, would later tell the FBI
she believed that Carolyn Bryant
had fabricated her story. Juanita
Milam died in 2014. The Justice
Department re-examined the
case a decade ago, but no one
was indicted as a murderer or an
accomplice.
Tyson said that he spoke with
Donham after her daughter-in-
law, Marsha Bryant, contacted
him. Bryant had read “Blood
Done Sign My Name,” about a
racist murder during his child
hood in Oxford, North Carolina,
and invited Tyson to meet with
her and Donham.
Tyson said he and Donham
had two conversations that both
lasted 2-3 hours and that he
planned at the time to place the
material in the archives at the
University of North Carolina.
Asked why he waited so long
to publicize his findings, he re
sponded that historians think in
different terms than do journal
ists.
“I’m more interested in what
speaks to the ages than in what is
the latest media thing,” he said.
He added that he wasn’t sure
whether Donham knew about
the book. He said he had fallen
out of touch with the family and
that when he last spoke with
Bryant, a few years ago, she said
Donham was in poor health.
Till was a fun-loving teenager
from Chicago visiting the Mis
sissippi Delta and helping out on
his great-uncle Mose Wright’s
farm. On Aug. 24, 1955, Till
and some other kids drove to a
local store, Bryant’s, for refresh
ments. At Bryant’s, some of the
kids stayed on the porch, watch
ing a game of checkers, while
the others filed inside to buy
bubble gum and sodas. Carolyn
Bryant, the 21-year-old wife of
proprietor Roy Bryant, was be
hind the counter.
Accounts of what happened
next differ.
Mrs. Bryant claimed Em
mett bragged about dating
white women up north. She
said he grabbed her and asked
her, “How about a date, baby?”
Simeon Wright, his cousin,
heard none of this. But there is
no doubt about what he heard
when they left the store, he told
the AP in 2005.
Standing on the front porch,
Emmett let out a wolf whistle.
Carolyn Donham’s where
abouts have long been a mys
tery, but North Carolina voter
rolls list a Carolyn Holloway
Donham. Holloway is her maid
en name.
The address is for a green, split-
level home in Raleigh at the mouth
of a neat cul-de-sac just two turns
off a busy four-lane thoroughfare.
The well-tended house has burnt-
orange shutters and a front-facing
brick chimney decorated with a
large metal sunburst. Orange flags
emblazed with the word “Google”
dot the lawn.
Reverend William Barber II, president of the North Carolina state chapter of
the NAACP, delivered an electrifying speech during the 2017 NNPA Mid-Winter
Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (Freddie Allen/AMG/NNPA)
Rev. William Barber Tells
Black Press: 'Bowing
Down Is Not an Option’
By Freddie Allen (Managing Editor, NNPA Newswire)
Reverend William Barber, the president of the North Carolina state chapter of the NAACP and leader
of the Moral Mondays movement, delivered a rousing keynote address to open the 2017 Mid-Winter
Conference of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA).
The theme of the conference was “Strengthening Black-owned Newspapers through Training,
Innovation and Technology.” The NNPA partnered with General Motors, Chevrolet, Ford Motor Company,
Reynolds American Inc. (RAI), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to host the conference;
Volkswagen, Ascension, Coca-Cola, and the American Association for Cancer Research supported the
event as sponsors.
During his speech titled, “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” Barber tackled
voter suppression in the aftermath of Shelby v. Holder, White evangelicalism and the current political
environment in the age of “alternative facts.”
Noting that President Woodrow Wilson played the White supremacist propaganda film “Birth of a
Nation” in the Oval office in 1911, Barber said that Trump’s ascension and election is not an anomaly in
American history.
“This is not the first time that White supremacy has occupied The White House. This is not the first
time that America has elected a racist egomaniac,” said Barber, reminding the audience that President
Wilson, a former college president, played “Birth” to signal that Reconstruction was over. “Education
doesn’t necessarily get racism out of you.”
To a chorus of “Amens,” Barber said that the one thing that we have to first decide to do in this
moment is that bowing down is not an option.
Recognizing that he was addressing a room full of journalists and publishers, Barber pitched ideas for
a number of articles and commentaries.
“Somebody has to unpack ‘so-called’ White evangelicalism that is illogical malpractice and heresy,”
said Barber. “We’ve got to have some papers that write and do some investigative work to connect the
money to White evangelicalism to the policies of extremism and racism, because some of our own folk
are sending money to some of these TV White evangelicals.”
Barber said that the loss of the full protections of the Voting Rights Act and voter suppression were two
of the most underreported stories during the last election cycle.
“Long before any Russian hack, the American electoral process was hacked by systemic racism and
fear,” said Barber. “The Southern Strategy is alive and well.”
Barber acknowledged that civil rights leaders and Democrats could have voiced louder criticism about
the lack of work done in the U.S. Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act.
“Democrats talked more about David Dukes than they did about voter suppression and the Voting
Rights Act being dismantled,” said Barber. .
Barber said that they were 868 fewer voting places across the nation; those closures disproportionately
affected Black voters.
“Voter suppression has been proven, voter fraud has been disproven. The lie about voter fraud is
a distraction from the truth about voter suppression, because voter suppression is about thievery. You
scratch a liar, you’ll find a thief,” said Barber. “Trump won because of the voter suppression that went on
in the Black community.”
After delivering a brief history of fusion politics, a time when poor Whites and Blacks worked together
to achieve political power in the South following the Civil War, Barber questioned why so many poor,
White people today cast votes for lawmakers that oppose establishing living wage standards, better
healthcare and more educational opportunities for low-income families.
The North Carolina pastor noted that there are 18.9 poor White people in the United States, about eight
million more than the number of poor Black people, though Black people experience poverty at higher
rates than Whites.
Barber said that exploring the real reasons why so many poor Whites vote against their own self-
interest, would make for a great investigative report.
Returning to the theme that today’s political environment in America is nothing new, Barber told the
story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who he described as “three millennials from the Bible days,”
that liked to write and Nebuchadnezzar, “a maniacal egomaniac who loved to tweet out his own news,”
loved to build towers and invited people to come to his towers to bow down.
When Nebuchadnezzar commanded that everyone bow down to his image and Shadrach, Meshach
and Abednego refused, the king threatened to throw them into the furnace.
“He didn’t know they already had a fire. They came from people who had been through the fire,” said
Barber. “They remembered how the lord had dealt with pharaoh. They remembered how David dealt with
Goliath.”
Barber said that the three young leaders had a fire in them, because they sung the songs of their
ancestors.
“Can we just make a decision, Black folks? Can we just make a decision, publishers? Can we just make
a decision, civil rights...that bowing down is not an option?” Barber implored. “I gotta suspicion that it’s
going be some fiery times. I gotta suspicion that it’s gonna get hot. I gotta suspicion that Nebuchadnezzar
is gonna do some rough stuff.”
Barber implored the publishers, journalists and activists in the room to go into the proverbial fire
standing up, because help won’t come, if you go in the fire bowing down.
“If you go in the fire standing up, God can transform the fire and the same fire that was meant to
destroy you, can become a fire of deliverance!” Barber shouted.
The crowd roared, delivering Barber a standing ovation. The Moral Mondays leader continued:
“Bowing down is not an option! Standing down is not an option! Looking down is not an option!
Breaking down is not an option! We’ve been through worse before.” Barber exclaimed. “We’ve been
through slavery. We’ve been through Jim Crow. We’ve been through the Trail of Tears and we’re gonna
stand up in this moment!” ■