Carolyn Bryant Dunham the white woman who accused Emmett Till of making advances towards her has died fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped and brutally murdered by Brian's then-husband and his half-brother in Mississippi in 1955 over the allegation the two men were acquitted in his killing by an all-white jury but later confessed in an interview the case gained national attention after Emmett Till's mother allowed Jet Magazine to take and publish photos of her son's mutilated body in an open casket the horrific image shocked the nation and served as the Catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement years after Till's death Dunham admitted to fabricating parts of her story although she was never charged with a crime Professor Davis helped joins us now he is a professor of rhetorical studies at Florida State University and he helped found the Emmett Till memory project he also co-authored a book about the media response to Till's murder Professor Houck thanks for being with us thank you for having me on Jim sure I'd like to start by asking you about sort of any interactions you had with the Bryant family I did it back in 2009 uh word got out that the family was shopping a memoir and I edit a book series with the university press of Mississippi and so I figured why not I wrote a note to the family I had an address and I sent it and of course I didn't figure I'd hear anything well a week later I get a phone call from a woman who identifies herself as Marcia Bryant Marsha Bryant is Carolyn Bryant's daughter-in-law and Marcia Bryant first of all wanted to know you know how did you know we had a had a manuscript and uh and then proceeded to talk my ear off for about a half an hour about her mom being innocent and and the families really never spoken and so I just tried to keep her on the line keeper talking uh but I'll never forget how she signed off as we were as we were getting ready to hang up uh she said you know your your uh your letter came in the mail and another letter came in the mail with it and in that letter was a death threat and so what I gathered from that was the family worked very hard over many years to protect her because I think those death threats were were not uncommon all right so Carolyn Brown herself hardly gave any interviews after the case but if we had this right in 2008 she reportedly told a historian by the name of Tim Tyson that key parts of her testimony were not true so how does all of that figure into what her daughter-in-law was telling you and what do you make of it well the FBI investigated Tim Tyson's claim that Carolyn Brian supposedly recanted to him and they did not find that evidence credible from Tim Tyson and this summer The the Memoir the unpublished Memoir leaked and for me what's interesting is in that Memoir she sticks exactly to the stories she gave on the witness stand on September 22nd 1955. so I take her at her word and her word we know is is is is really just a bunch of Lies we know this because in on September 2nd just two days after Emmett's body was discovered um she uh she was interviewed by a lawyer and in that kind of deposition she uh she she indicates what happened in that store uh and Emma did not put his hands on her he did not talk dirty to her he did not talk fresh to her did not talk about being with white women before uh and so those were lies that she concocted on the witness stand three weeks later I just want to be clear about this professor never in the years after this did she ever express even a syllable of remorse correct well in her Memoir she does uh uh do that but she never did it in front of a camera um she never did it in a in a public venue so you're right uh we the the Emmett Till Community the family wanted to hear from her directly but that never happened all right so the Bryant family obviously has had to live uh connected to this with the Legacy I'm just curious um have any of the other Generations said anything about this in the almost 70 years since they really haven't they've kept a real tight lid on her story what I'll be interested to see is in the days and weeks ahead uh did Carol and Brian perhaps leave instructions for somebody to talk uh and we'll see um we've long wanted the family to say something but again uh the sons the grandkids nobody has said a word it's so important obviously to continue to tell the story of what happened uh you have the emery till memory project that you helped found to help do that can you just give us a little bit of insight into what the Emmett Till memory project is all about yeah I'm happy to so we founded this project back in 2015 it was a joint project between the University of Kansas my colleague Dave tell and Patrick Weems at the Emmett Till interpretive Center and my colleagues here at Florida State and what we wanted to do is we wanted to educate a new generation especially younger Generations who are growing up on smartphones and who can go to the Mississippi Delta as well as Chicago and study the case from their phone so it's a GPS enabled app that takes you from site to site and tells the story along with archival images as well as pretty detailed narratives of what happened at that particular location Professor Davis Houck doing some important work making sure the memory of Emmett Till is preserved and what happened to him is never forgotten thank you you're welcome thank you