A Christmas parade scheduled for Saturday in Kentucky was canceled after authorities received threats against racial justice protesters at an Emmett Till rally scheduled for the same day.
The Jaycees’ annual Bowling Green Christmas parade has been canceled out of “excessive caution,” according to a police statement.
The originally planned mistletoe market in the city of 70,000 was also canceled on Saturday.
At least three groups had planned to demonstrate simultaneously outside the city’s Justice Center on Saturday afternoon, according to a joint statement from the Bowling Green Police Department and the Warren County Sheriff’s Office.
The protest aimed to demand justice for Emmett Till, who was brutally beaten and shot in the head in 1955 at the age of 14 after white woman Carolyn Bryant Donham said he whistled and touched her in a Mississippi store.
In a Bowling Green Facebook video, Kentucky Police Chief Michael Delaney, right, said at least three groups plan to protest Saturday noon. Sheriff Brett Hightower is seen at left
Carolyn Bryant Donham is now 89 and still lives in Kentucky. declined to give their exact location
Authorities learned of the threats against protesters late Friday night and eventually canceled the Christmas parade early Saturday morning
Carolyn Bryant Donham is now 89 and still lives in Kentucky. declined to give their exact location.
She suffers from cancer, is blind and is cared for by a hospice in the small community at the end of her life.
When she was photographed earlier this year, tubes delivering oxygen were running over her ears and into her nose.
Donham, photographed a younger age. She accused Till of whistling at her at a grocery store
Authorities learned of the threats against protesters late Friday night, according to the statement published on Facebook.
“Late that evening, we learned that these protesters were under threat,” said Warren County Sheriff Brett Hightower. “The specific threat threatens to shoot anyone who protests and anyone who helps protesters.”
Authorities couldn’t determine how credible the threat was, but felt it was important to issue an alert, Hightower said.
The Bowling Green Police Department is working with the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, the Kentucky State Police, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to determine the source of the threat.
“The safety of our participants and spectators is ALWAYS our priority. We were in constant communication with law enforcement and all week felt we could provide a safe and fun event. With this latest information, we knew that rescheduling was our best option. We will work today to find another date for the parade,” the organizer of the Christmas parade posted on Facebook after its cancellation.
Donham’s husband Roy Bryant (right) and half-brother JW Milam (left) were arrested for lynching Till but were acquitted. The couple later admitted their guilt but could not be prosecuted due to double jeopardy laws
Donham alongside her husband, Roy Bryant, during his Mississippi murder trial in 1955
After a 1955 arrest warrant for Donham (then Bryant) was discovered in June, interest in the case was revived
The murder of Emmett Till drew renewed attention in June when an unissued warrant for Donham’s arrest was discovered in the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse in Mississippi.
Donham, known as “Mrs. Roy Bryant’ on the warrant was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted in Till’s death in 1955.
Relatives of the Tills wanted authorities to finally arrest Donham nearly 70 years later, but in August a Leflore County grand jury dismissed an indictment against them.
The jury found there was insufficient evidence to charge Donham with manslaughter and kidnapping.
Till, 14, from Chicago, was visiting family when he entered a store in Money, Mississippi, where Donham, then 21, worked.
Till’s mother famously opted for an open-casket funeral for her 14-year-old so mourners in Chicago could see what had happened
She accused Till of making inappropriate advances after he booed her, an act then thought to go against racist welfare laws in the South.
Evidence suggests that a woman, possibly Donham, then identified Till to his killers, her husband Roy Bryant and another man, JW Milam.
An all-white jury acquitted the men of Till’s murder, but the couple later admitted the murder in a magazine interview.
Donham also recanted her story to author Timothy B. Tyson, telling him that the original allegation in the 2017 book, The Blood of Emmett Till, was a lie.
Last year, a federal investigation re-examined the murder after the Justice Department found no evidence Donham lied.
Till’s murder sent shockwaves across the country and spurred the civil rights movement.
Her mother insisted on an open-coffin burial to show the brutality of his murder.
Emmett Till (left) and his cousin Wheeler Parker (back right) are pictured on their bikes. The picture, which also captures family friend Joe B. Williams, was taken between 1949 and 1950
How Emmett Till’s brutal torture and killing in 1955 became a turning point in the US civil rights movement
Emmett Till’s fateful visit to his family in Mississippi in 1955 became one of the horrific lynchings that ignited the civil rights movement.
The trip quickly turned into tragedy after the 14-year-old was kidnapped, tortured and killed after witnesses said he whistled and grabbed white woman Carolyn Bryant Donham as she worked at a local shop.
Days after the allegations, on August 28, 1995, Till was at home with his cousin when two white men, Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother JW Milam, burst in and dragged Till out of the house.
Emmett Till’s (pictured) fateful visit to his family in Mississippi in 1955 became one of the horrific lynchings that launched the civil rights movement
The 14-year-old (pictured) was kidnapped, tortured and killed after witnesses said he whistled and grabbed white woman Carolyn Bryant Donham as she worked at a local shop
The two men brutally beat the teenager before dragging him to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where they shot him in the head and threw his body in the water.
Days after the brutal murder, Till’s body was dragged from the river where it had been thrown after being weighed down with a cotton gin fan.
The lynching became national news after Till’s devastated mother, Mamie Bradley, insisted on an open-coffin funeral in Chicago to display his tortured body and shed light on the violence inflicted on black people in the South.
Thousands of people flocked to Roberts Temple Church of God to see evidence of the hate crime, with Till’s mother taking the bold step as she felt the world needed to know what had happened.
As the murder gained more attention, two publications ran graphic images of Till’s corpse, leading to national condemnation of the teen’s death.
After weeks of outrage, Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white Mississippi jury. Months later, they confessed in a paid magazine interview.
Till’s lynching became a linchpin of the civil rights movement, and people continued to fight for justice for Till decades later.
In 2017, a book quoted Donham, now in her 80s, as saying she lied when she claimed Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances while she worked at a shop.
The murder ignited the civil rights movement after Till’s mother (pictured with her son) insisted on an open coffin to show his tortured body
The shocking claims prompted the Justice Department to reopen the investigation. The FBI was unable to prove their alleged lies but rebuked the validity of Donham’s testimony after an investigation concluded in December.
Following allegations of Donham’s lies, she told the FBI that she never recanted her allegations, while relatives also denied the allegations.
At the time, officials said historian Timothy B. Tyson, the author of 2017’s “The Blood of Emmett Till,” was unable to provide any records or transcripts in which Donham allegedly admitted about her encounter with the lying to teenagers.
Till’s family has never seen a conviction for the crime, while Bryant and Milam, who are both dead now, have not been tried again.