Finally! Klansman convicted of 1966 murder

Special to the World

This article was reprinted from the August 29, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Fighters against racism voiced satisfaction at the conviction on murder charges of Ku Klux Klan terrorist Samuel H. Bowers in the firebomb death of Mississippi NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer in 1966.

NAACP CEO Kweisi Mfume hailed the unanimous verdict handed down by a multiracial jury here. "This decision is long overdue and should send a strong, clear message to all harbingers of hate that justice will not be denied even if it takes 32 years, as was the case in Vernon Dahmer's murder," said Mfume.

Dahmer headed the NAACP's Forrest County Branch and owned the family grocery store, which he opened for use as a voter registration site - one of few places in Forrest County where Black people could register. The Klan firebombed it. Dahmer, himself engulfed in the flames, pushed his wife and children out the back door to safety.

"Finally, after five trials, Ellie Dahmer can bring some closure to this horrible ordeal that took the life of her loving husband, who was a courageous man and devoted father," Mfume continued.

The previous four trials ended with hung juries. A delegation of NAACP staff and members attended the weeklong trial. The association had pushed for the reopening of the case in 1994.

Richard Barrett, described as an "attorney and professional racist," in fact a Klansman, distriibuted a scurrilous leaflet outside the Hattiesburg courthouse headlined, "The Crimes of Vernon Dahmer."

The leaflet accuses Dahmer of collaborating with civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Carl Braden, and Michael Schwerner (one of three young civil rights activists murdered in Mississippi). The leaflet also denounces Dahmer as an admirer of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, "an NAACP founder and communist ."

Barrett hailed past juries that "rejected. . .an invasion of Mississippi by communists, draft dodgers, black power forces and insurrectionists. . .Mississippi can whip the NAACP for the fifth time."

But every juror on the multiracial jury that voted unanimously to convict Bowers was a citizen of Mississippi, not an "invader."