Participants in a recent protest seeking the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman connected to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till returned Monday to Bowling Green to voice their demands, but local law enforcement has said it can’t make an arrest because there are no charges.

Members of the Veterans Association of African Descendants, one of a number of groups who came to Bowling Green on Dec. 3 as part of a demonstration for justice for Till, held a news conference Monday outside Bowling Green Police Department headquarters.

The group continues to call for Donham’s arrest and circulated a list of demands that include a call to evict Donham from Ashton Parc apartment complex, where she now reportedly lives, as well as the release of Najee Muhammad, a demonstrator who was arrested Dec. 3 on warrants originating in Ohio.

“It’s time for justice to prevail, not just on paper, for people of African descent, but in practice,” said Elder Mmoja Ajabu, founder of the Veterans Association of African Descendants. “We ain’t asking nobody to break the law. We’re asking the police to follow the law … we don’t want to believe that the good people of Bowling Green want a woman that took part in the lynching of a 14-year-old child to be in their presence in this city.”

Ajabu said his group is exploring filing a civil lawsuit in Mississippi.

Civil rights activists gathered here earlier this month after it emerged that Donham, now 88, had moved here.

Previous efforts to prosecute Donham on state charges related to Till’s death have been unsuccessful, but the discovery in June of a previously unserved warrant against her in the basement of the Leflore County, Miss., Courthouse raised hopes among civil rights advocates seeking justice for Till.

A grand jury meeting in that county two months later, however, declined to indict Donham on charges of kidnapping and manslaughter, finding insufficient evidence to formally charge her.

In a video statement posted on social media about an hour before the news conference, Chief Michael Delaney of the Bowling Green Police Department said that police learned in September of the planned protest and met with organizers on Nov. 21, a meeting attended by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, local NAACP chapter president Ryan Dearbone and Rev. John C. Lee Jr. of Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Delaney said that during this meeting, rally organizers acknowledged there was no active warrant for Donham.

Police have said that Donham’s name does not appear in the National Crime Information Center, a database that law enforcement agencies use to search for information about things such as missing or wanted persons, stolen property and domestic violence protective orders.

“We have confirmed multiple times there is not an outstanding warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham,” Delaney said in the statement. “Therefore, she cannot legally be arrested.”

Delaney said law enforcement are continuing to investigate the origin of a threat to kill protesters or anyone in the community helping the protesters. The threat, broadcast over amateur radio, prompted the postponement of the Jaycees Christmas Parade for one week.

Dearbone said that the local NAACP chapter supports “long overdue” justice on Till’s behalf, but would not join groups currently involved in demonstrations in their efforts.

“Despite what’s been said by some at this point, there’s nothing that we can do here in Bowling Green or in Kentucky to aid in that,” Dearbone said. “While Ms. Bryant Donham does live in our community, that’s not a fight we are able to fight. Ms. Bryant Donham is not a fugitive from the law and she is not being harbored here in our community, as there are currently no charges against her.”

“There are people and places throughout our communities that need us to be there for them right now and those are who we are focusing our energies on.”

Lee said his faith informs him of his moral obligation to stand up for justice, but cautioned against reckless acts in the pursuit of justice.

“I would like to caution the citizens in general and people of faith in particular to please be cautious against allowing people from other places that may or may not have the purest motives for what they do to come in and both excite and incite us to ‘go to war’ without first counting up the cost,” Lee said. “I simply remind us that … before you go all in, make sure you have all of the facts because it’s a dangerous thing to get some facts after the fact.”

Police have said that the warrants against Muhammad charge him with aggravated battery on police/firefighter/EMT, resisting arrest, assault, burglary, theft, aggravated theft, using sham legal process and tampering with records.

At Monday’s news conference, reporters were provided a copy of an indictment from Cuyahoga County, Ohio Court of Common Pleas showing Muhammad has been charged with burglary, theft, using sham legal process and tampering with records.

The Cuyahoga County court’s website shows an open case against Muhammad listing those charges.

Muhammad remains in Warren County Regional Jail awaiting extradition.

Till was a 14-year-old Chicago resident visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was killed by Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam in 1955.

Donham, who was married at the time to Bryant, claimed that she was working at the family grocery store in Money, Miss., when Till whistled at her when he came into the store.

Her account of what happened, however, has varied over the years.

Till was abducted days later from a relative’s home, brutally tortured and killed. His body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River.

Bryant and Milam were charged with murder, but quickly acquitted by an all-white jury. The men later confessed to their crimes in a magazine interview.

Till’s death galvanized civil rights advocates in the generations since, but efforts to prosecute Donham have been unsuccessful.

Prior to the most recent decision not to indict Donham, the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation in 2004 to see if any charges could be brought against anyone still living in connection with Till’s death, but determined that the statute of limitations had run out on any federal crime.

A grand jury meeting in 2007 in Mississippi declined to indict Donham on state charges.

The DOJ reopened the matter in 2017 after an allegation surfaced that Donham had recanted her previous account of events leading up to Till’s death while speaking with a professor writing a book on the case.

Last year, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi announced it closed its investigation, saying that it would not have been possible to prove that Donham intentionally recanted her state court testimony at the original 1955 trial, and that she lied to the FBI when she denied having done so.