Vernon Dahmer
Site of Vernon Dahmer’s murder, Kelly Settlement, near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 2009
Vernon Dahmer was killed on January 10, 1966, when Klansmen firebombed his home and attached store. Dahmer was the president of the NAACP chapter in Hattiesburg and helped black voters by letting them pay their poll taxes at his store. Four of Dahmer's sons were serving overseas and had protective escort from the airport when they returned. Fourteen men were arrested in the late 1960s, resulting in one conviction and several mistrials. Samuel Bowers [see Poorhouse Road], who served six years in prison for the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, was retried and convicted for Dahmer's murder in 1998. Dahmer’s wife erected a memorial on the site of the house and store with bottles that were found in the wreckage.