- Deborah Watts, a cousin of Emmitt Till, says she wasn't contacted during the DOJ's investigation.
- DOJ reopened Till's case in 2017 following new information presented in The Blood of Emmett Till book.
- Watts says her attention is now turned to the investigation in Mississippi and passing legislation.
Deborah Watts, a cousin of Emmitt Till was hopeful when the United States Department of Justice reopened the case of the murder of her cousin in 2017 but that quickly soured.
She tells Insider, she never received updates from the DOJ or Leflore county, Mississippi where a local investigation was taking place in tandem.
That's why in 2020 she launched the Justice for Emmitt Till campaign.
"After we had been pushing for truth, justice and accountability the announcement that came from The Department of Justice that they closed the investigation was very disappointing." Watts who is a Co-Founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation told Insider.
"We expected them to dig deeper than Timothy Tyson's book," she added.
The DOJ reopened Till's case in 2017 following new information presented in Tyson's book, The Blood of Emmett Till where Tyson alleges Carolyn Bryant Donham — the white woman who accused Till a Black teen, of whistling at her and making advances in 1955 —recanted her statement.
When federal investigators followed up with Donham on that claim, however, she denied it.
The author of The Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy Tyson did not record nor transcribe the information attributed to Donham in his book.
He also gave inconsistent statements to the DOJ of whether a recording had ever been made.
"My reporting is rock solid," Tyson said in a statement to CNN. "Carolyn Bryant denies it and avoids talking about it like it was the plague.
"I am standing in the public square telling the truth as I see it based on solid evidence," he argued.
Insider reached out to Tyson for comment but did not hear back.
Till was just 14-years-old, visiting family in Mississippi, when he was falsely accused by Donham of whistling and making advances toward her outside the store she and her husband, Roy, owned.
Less than a week later, Roy's half brother, J.W. Milam, snatched Till from his bed in the middle of the night, threw him into the bed of a pickup truck before viciously attacking him, shooting him in the head and tossing him into the Tallahatchie River.
An all-white jury a few weeks later acquitted Roy and Milam of the murder, even though eyewitnesses identified the defendants in testimony and the men confessed to kidnapping Till.
The initial investigation and trial for Till's murder was over in less than a month.
At his funeral, his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on having an open casket so that the world could see what was done to her son.
That image became a symbol of lynchings of Black Americans in the south during the Jim Crow era and was an igniter of the Civil Rights Movement.
The fight for this racial injustice doesn't end with the DOJ's investigation closing, Watts says.
While Till-Mobley passed away in 2003, Watts says she has to continue the fight for justice for her cousin.
"This doesn't mean justice is over," Watts said. "It's far from it because we're focused on the state of Mississippi. We're focused on them writing the wrongs and doing the right thing.
She added that "bringing Carolyn Bryant to justice" is "what we hope and that's what we're continuing to demand."
Donham is still alive, and reported to be living in hiding under a false name.
Last summer when racial justice protest erupted in response to the murder of George Floyd, many protestors in the street linked what happened to Till and Floyd as "major media" catalyst for racial justice movements.
"These two tragedies showed the tipping point of society," Benjamin Saulsberry, told USA Today at the time. "The Emmett Till murder was not the first murder. There were so many others. But it was the tipping point."
Just as protestors last summer demanded all officers involved in the murder of Floyd be charged, Till's community is demanding all accomplices in his murder be held responsible.
Watts is calling on the US Senate to pass the Emmett Till Antilynching Act so that President Joe Biden can sign it into law. She says she is connecting the past with the present which presents the urgency to also pass the Emmett Till Victims Recovery Program in the state of Minnesota.
That law would establish support for families of those killed by police violence.
"We're still looking for Congress and the President to move this process forward and are hopeful that every one stands in solidarity with us as we continue this fight," Watts told Insider.
"We're not going to give up," she added. "We can not allow his death to be in vain."