Samuel Bowers

Samuel Holloway Bowers was a convicted murderer and leading white supremacist in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. In response to this movement and perceived threats to national security from Judaism and Communism, he co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its Imperial Wizard. Bowers was best known for committing two murders of civil rights activists in southern Mississippi. He was responsible for the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner near Philadelphia, 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 bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian in 1967 and 1968. He died in prison at the age of 82.