By her own telling, Mississippi authorities provided Carolyn Bryant Donham with preferential treatment rather than prosecution after her encounter with Emmett Till led to the lynching of the Black teenager in the summer of 1955.

Instead of arresting Donham on a warrant that accused her of kidnapping days after Tills abduction, an officer passed along word that relatives would take her and her two young sons away from home amid a rising furor over the case, Donham said in a 2008 memoir made public last month. The sheriff would later claim Donham, 21 at the time, could not be located for arrest.

Once her husband and his half-brother were jailed on murder charges in Tills death, she said in the unpublished manuscript, two men with the sheriffs office drove her and her sister-in-law to the lockup for a relaxed visit outside their cell and even ferried the women back home. Later, before their murder trial, the men somehow were allowed to attend a family dinner without guards, she said.

I was shocked! How in the world were they released from jail to come to eat supper with us? I didnt see who dropped them off or picked them up to return them to jail, but we had a wonderful evening together, Donham recalled in the memoir, written by her daughter-in-law based on the older womans words.

Nearly 70 years later, Donhams retelling of the days surrounding Tills abduction and lynching stokes fresh frustration among relatives of Till and activists pushing for Donhams prosecution, particularly now that a Mississippi grand jury has decided against charging her with kidnapping in his abduction or manslaughter in his death.

For them, the revelations also raise questions about whether Donham, now 88, is still being protected despite what they see as new evidence against her.

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Carolyn Donham has rarely commented publicly on the Till case, and she has not said anything publicly about the recent decision against new charges. Thats why her memoir made public by a historian who said he obtained it during an interview years ago created such a stir when it was released a few weeks ago. The decision not to indict her followed media reports with details of the document, but its unclear whether grand jurors considered contents of the autobiography.

In the 99-page memoir, Donham said Till, 14 and visiting relatives in Mississippi from Chicago, walked into the family-owned store where she was minding the counter on Aug. 24, 1955. Neither husband Roy Bryant nor his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were around that day it was just her and Till, who also went by the family nickname of Bobo.

In the account, Donham repeats her testimony from the murder trial that Till grabbed her and made lewd comments. He also whistled, she said, in the only part of her story backed up by Till cousin and witness Wheeler Parker Jr. during an interview with The Associated Press.