A Kentucky Christmas parade scheduled for Saturday has been canceled after authorities received threats against protesters at an Emmett Till rally on the same day.
The annual Jaycees Christmas Parade in Bowling Green, Kentucky was canceled out of “abundance of caution,” according to one pronunciation. The Mistletoe Market, also in Bowling Green, is Saturday canceled also.
According to a joint statement from the Bowling Green Police Department and the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, at least three groups planned to protest simultaneously outside the city’s Justice Center on Saturday afternoon. The protest was intended to demand justice for Emmett Till, according to NBC WNKYwho was 14 when he was brutally beaten and shot in the head in 1955 after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, said he whistled at and touched her in a Mississippi store.
Carolyn Bryant Donham, now 89, lives in Bowling Green, according to the outlet.
Authorities learned of the threats against the demonstrators late on Friday night, the pronunciation Posted to Facebook overnight.
“Late tonight, we learned of a threat to these protesters,” said Warren County Sheriff Brett Hightower. “The specific threat is to shoot anyone who protests and anyone who helps the demonstrators.”
Authorities have not determined the validity of the threat, but felt it was important to issue a warning, Hightower said.
The Bowling Green Police Department is working with the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, the Kentucky State Police and the Department of Homeland Security to determine the source of the threat.
The murder of Emmett Till received renewed attention in June when an unexpelled warrant for Donham’s arrest was unearthed in the basement of Mississippi’s Leflore County Courthouse. Donham, who was identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the warrant, was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted in 1955 for Till’s death.
Relatives of the Tills wanted authorities to finally arrest Donham nearly 70 years later, but in August a grand jury in Leflore County declined to indict her. The jury determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Donham with manslaughter and kidnapping.
Till, 14, of Chicago, was visiting family when he entered a store in Money, Mississippi where the then 21-year-old Donham worked. She accused Till of making inappropriate advances after he whistled at her, an act considered at the time to be against the South’s racist social codes.
There is evidence that a woman, possibly Donham, 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 duo later admitted to the murder in a magazine interview.
Donham also recanted her story to the author Timothy B. Tysonto tell him that her initial accusation was a lie in the 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till.” Last year, a federal investigation re-examining the murder ended after the Justice Department found no evidence that Donham had lied.
Till’s murder sent shockwaves through the country and helped spark the civil rights movement. His mother insisted on an open casket burial to show how brutal his murder was.
The associated press, Minyvonne Burke and Safia Samee Ali contributed.