FILE – This 1955 file photo shows Carolyn Bryant. Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 has died Tuesday night, April 25, in hospice care in Louisiana, according to a death report filed Thursday, April 27, 2023, in Calcasieu Parish Coroner’s Office in Louisiana. She was 88. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick, File)

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of whistling at and accosting her in 1955 has died. Carolyn Bryant Donham died Tuesday night at 88. That’s according to a death report filed Thursday in Westlake, Louisiana. Her claim against Till caused his lynching in Mississippi, and the brutal act galvanized a generation of activists to rise up in the Civil Rights Movement. Till’s kidnapping and murder gained international attention after his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral in their hometown of Chicago so the world could see her 14-year-old son’s mutilated body in photos published by Jet magazine.