Home News Samuel Bowers: Co-Founder of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

Samuel Bowers: Co-Founder of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

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 Samuel Bowers was an Imperial Wizard of White Knights of Ku Klux Klan, and a prominent white supremacist during Civil Rights Movement.

For the murder of Vernon Dahmer (a civil rights activist), he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Bowers’ conviction was one among many civil rights murders that were successfully prosecuted in South Carolina decades after their commission.

He was convicted in 1998 by a jury that included six blacks and five whites.

He was an associate with the Ku Klux Klan

Samuel Holloway Bowers was a co-founder of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which was founded in 1964 by Samuel Holloway Bowers.

He was convicted of the murders of three civil rights workers in 1967.

While historians are often unable to explain why religious individuals would engage in illegal and violent activities, Bowers’s interest is driven largely by his belief in the Christian Identity Movement.

This extremist Christian sect viewed Anglo-Saxon whites against Jews as Satanic conspirators.

He believed that communists were leading civil right movements, which he thought was incompatible with Christianity.

Marsh asserts that Bowers’ radical Christian interpretation is what drove his actions.

This was a worldview that many of Bowers’ South-based contemporaries hadn’t even considered accepting.

This worldview may have been what he used to plan and carry out the Mississippi Burning murders.

This worldview probably fuelled his animus toward federal law enforcement, and motivated him to plan the murders James Chaney (Michael Schwarner) as well as Andrew Goodman.

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Vernon Dahmer was shot and killed, and he was convicted

Vernon Dahmer (a farmer and voter rights advocate) announced that his grocery store would collect poll tax from customers.

Two carloads full of KKK members stormed from nearby Jones County. They came to Dahmer’s aid in their registration efforts.

Bowers was charged with ordering the murder as an imperial wizard for Klan groups. In 1998, he was convicted.

Vernon Dahmer was an activist in civil rights and was shot to death by KKK members.

He was convicted on one count of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Over the next 32 years, Dahmer’s family and friends fought for justice tirelessly.

The case was reopened in 1991 with Jerry Mitchell, an investigative journalist.

Although the fight was difficult, justice was finally achieved for their husband.

Bowers was found guilty after four mistrials, and another trial in 1998.

He was one the White Knights of Ku Klux Klan.

Bowers was the founding member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’s first Imperial Wizard, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

He was responsible for two murders of Mississippi civil right workers: Andrew Goodman’s, James Chaney’s and Michael Schwerners in Neshoba County in 1964 and 1966.

He was also involved in destroying 44 black churches and the violence during Freedom Summer’s voter register campaign.
These crimes were convicted in 1998, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Bowers’ early Christian Identity theology may have had a significant impact on his actions.

The group’s vision was to create a racial holy war that would exterminate Jews and make them “imposters”, meaning they were not allowed to exist in this country.

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He was a KKK member

Bowers was the Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the KKK. He was appointed by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis to this position.

Samuel co-founded the White Knights of KKK in 1964 after the dissolution of the Original Knights. Samuel also became the first Imperial Wizard of the KKK.

He was responsible in the murders in southern Mississippi of civil rights activists, including the 1962 firebombing at Vernon Dahmer’s home.

After being found guilty, Bowers was sentenced in 1998 to life imprisonment.

Early evidence suggests that Bowers was influenced initially by Christian Identity.

He intended to use the Mississippi Burning murders as a gateway into the cycle of violence Swift followers believed would lead to an end-times war of the races.

His plan to attack Jewish targets was also a part of his religious impulse.

While the KKK is a reactionary group, there are some Klansmen with real political goals.

Many of them voted in favor of social change and supported increased roads construction and enforcement of prohibition.