Samuel Bowers

Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. (August 6, 1924 – November 5, 2006) was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Previously, he was a Grand dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Bowers was responsible for instigating and planning the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by members of his Klan chapter near Philadelphia, Mississippi, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, 32 years after the crime. He also was accused of being involved in the 1967–1968 bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian (according to one of the people convicted of some of the bombings, Thomas A. Tarrants III). He died in prison at the age of 82.

Early life Bowers was born on August 25, 1924, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Samuel Bowers Sr., a salesman, and his wife Evangeline Bowers (née Peyton), daughter of a well-to-do planter. He had deep roots in the southern Mississippi–New Orleans area on both sides of his family. His maternal grandfather had a plantation while his father's father, Eaton J. Bowers, was a four-term Congressman from Mississippi's Gulf Coast. Representative Bowers was an explicitly virulent opponent of equality for African Americans. In a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1904, during his freshman term, he said:

Sam Bowers Jr. attended high school in Jackson, Mississippi. While a high school student, Bowers worked part-time at Jackson's newly established Mississippi School Book Depository. He was among the first group of staff members hired after the state legislature approved of and passed a free textbook program championed by Governor Paul B. Johnson Sr. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy. Eventually, Bowers settled in Laurel, Mississippi. He started his own small business, Sambo Amusement Company, variously reported to be a pinball machine business and a vending machine business.

White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Bowers, along with many other southern whites during the Cold War, was antagonistic toward the civil rights movement, believing that it was a movement which was led by the far left and organized by the Communist Party, and he began to express racist political views in the late 1950s. Bowers came to believe that the Soviet Union was a front for Jewish elites which were seeking to overthrow Christianity as the dominant religion of Western society, that Fidel Castro's government in Cuba was recruiting and providing military training to blacks as part of a plot to invade the Gulf Coast, and that the U.S. federal government would use the invasion as a pretext to federalize the National Guard and deport all whites from his home state of Mississippi.

Bowers was appointed Grand Dragon of Mississippi by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis in 1959 or 1960. Davis resigned in 1964, just after Congress launched an investigation into the KKK, and the Original Knights began to fragment. Bowers believed that the original Ku Klux Klan was too passive. On February 15, 1964, at a meeting in Brookhaven, Mississippi, he convinced about 200 members of the original Knights to defect and join his Klan, which would be named the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He became the group's first fraternal "Imperial Wizard," writing a "Klan Konstitution" for the "Sovereign Realm of Mississippi", which he would govern with the assistance of a body that he would name the "Klongress." Bowers adopted a code of secrecy under which nobody outside the Klan knew the Imperial Wizard's identity.

In January 1966, Bowers, along with several other members of the White Knights of the KKK, was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify about Klan activities. Although Byron De La Beckwith gave his name when asked by the committee (but would answer no other substantive questions), other witnesses, such as Bowers, invoked the Fifth Amendment even in response to that question.

In 1966, alleged members of the White Knights firebombed the house of Vernon Dahmer, a civil rights activist who was working to register African Americans for the vote. Dahmer died of burn injuries, which covered 40% of his body, and damage to his lungs, which were seared while rescuing his family from the fire.

According to later testimony by ex-White Knights member T. Webber Rogers, Bowers gave the direct order to have Dahmer killed "in any way possible." After four previous trials ended in deadlock (a 1968 jury split 11 to 1 in favor of guilty, and in 1969 a jury split 10–2 in favor of conviction), Bowers was convicted of the murder in August 1998 and sentenced to life in prison.

In 1967, White Knights were alleged to have begun a campaign against Jewish targets in Mississippi. Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson and Congregation Beth Israel in Meridian were bombed. Also, the home of Jackson's Rabbi Perry Nussbaum was attacked. The actual perpetrators of these crimes were suspects Thomas A. Tarrants III and Kathy Ainsworth.

The FBI became involved in the case and, with threatening accusations against local law enforcement, began tracking down potential bombers.

A breakthrough in the case came when two Klan brothers, Alton Wayne Roberts and Raymond Roberts, met with the FBI and the police in exchange for reward money and immunity. Alton Wayne Roberts had previously been sentenced to 10 years in prison for violating the civil rights of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. He agreed to cooperate to receive a reduced sentence. A joint FBI and local police operation ambushed Tarrants and Ainsworth. Ainsworth was killed, and Tarrants was severely wounded.

Conviction and death

Convicted in August 1998 of ordering the assassination of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., Bowers served a life sentence. According to the commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC), only one person visited Bowers during his incarceration. The visitor claimed to be Bowers' brother, who listed a false address and fictitious Mississippi town as his residence. Bowers died in the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman) Hospital of cardiopulmonary arrest on Sunday, November 5, 2006, aged 82.

After Bowers died, an out-of-state relative came forward to claim his body. He never married.