But Hattiesburg remains forever moved by slaying 32 years ago

By Jerry Mitchell, Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer

HATTIESBURG -- The anniversary of Vernon Dahmer’s death will pass today with no parade, no marches, no fanfare.

Yet the day he died here 32 years ago forever changed this community.

‘‘I think what happened woke up Hattiesburg to the real benefits of good race relations,’’ said Ralph Nooncaster, former president of the Chamber of Commerce. ‘‘I think it has made a community that respects people more so than if it hadn’t happened.’’

How this small Mississippi town reacted to the Ku Klux Klan’s firebombing of Dahmer’s house on Jan. 10, 1966, has been cited as a model for other cities.

In the wake of that tragedy, Nooncaster quickly raised $10,000 in this small town, with some donations for rebuilding coming from segregationists.

Eddie A. Holloway, president of the Hattiesburg City Council and acting dean of students at the University of Southern Mississippi, said local leaders ‘‘recognized that Mr. Dahmer and those who worked with him represented a significant people, a mission shared by people of character.’’

He explained that Dahmer fit none of the categories that critics had for those who pushed for the right to vote:

‘‘Outside agitator.’’ Dahmer was born and reared in the Hattiesburg community, serving on the board for the local all-black school.

‘‘Atheist.’’ He regularly worked with the Shady Grove Baptist Church and served as superintendent of Sunday school there.

‘‘America-hating communist.’’ Six of his seven sons served in the armed forces, combining for a total of 78 years in the military.

Newspapers published a photograph of four of Dahmer’s sons in military uniform, staring at the ashes of what was once their home.

That picture moved many Americans and Mississippians, said Neil McMillen, author of Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. ‘‘It was a haunting picture of young patriots coming home.’’

Family faced threats

Before Dahmer died, the community had been far from peaceful.

He knew well what happened to those who challenged the system. One friend, Clyde Kennard, had sought to enroll at what is now the University of Southern Mississippi, only to be framed by authorities on a liquor possession charge, state Sovereignty Commission records show.

Another friend, Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers, was shot on June 12, 1963, in Jackson just after midnight.

Before night fell again that day, Dahmer brought ‘‘his guns to the front of the house,’’ recalled his widow, Ellie.

The early 1960s, she said, were filled with threats to the family.

Dahmer’s son, Dennis, was only 9 when he answered the telephone one day and told the caller his father wasn’t home.

‘‘You tell that n----- that we’re going to kill him,’’ the caller said.

Nightriders shot out the plate- glass window of the family’s grocery store so many times Dahmer put in several glass panes to minimize future repair costs.

Dahmer waited many nights with loaded shotguns, peering out his window for nightriders. He and his wife, Ellie, slept in shifts.

‘‘I slept the first part of the night,’’ she recalled. ‘‘I went to bed early and got up at 1 (a.m.).’’

With the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the bleary-eyed shifts ended.

‘‘The threatening calls had stopped, the acts of violence,’’ recalled Dahmer’s son, Dennis. ‘‘We pretty much figured it was all over with. Blacks had accomplished the right to vote.’’

In fact, racial cooperation here had improved so much that Dahmer volunteered to let local black Mississippians in the community pay their poll taxes at his grocery store.

The same night the radio announced the plans, two carloads of members of the Ku Klux Klan sped into his gravel driveway about 2 a.m. Jan. 10.

Molotov cocktails crashed into the family store and house. A blaring horn, stuck when a car caught on fire, awakened Vernon Dahmer.

While his wife helped their children escape out a back window, he rushed to the front door and shot back at firing Klansmen. Flames seared his lungs, and he died later that day.

‘‘There was no way my dad stood a chance against two carloads of armed individuals,’’ said Dahmer’s son, Dennis. ‘‘If he hadn’t done what he had done, they probably would have killed us all.’’

Hours before he breathed his last breath, Dahmer said, ‘‘What happened to us last night can happen to anybody, white or black. At one time, I didn’t think so, but I have changed my mind.’’

Dahmer died before he could exercise the right he had fought years to have: the right to vote.

Landmark conviction

Months after Dahmer was killed, a grand jury in Hattiesburg returned murder indictments against 15 men identified by the FBI as members of the Ku Klux Klan.

The first man prosecuted was Cecil Sessum, who confessed to authorities two months later, describing himself as an exalted cyclops for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

But whether Sessum would be convicted was up to a jury made up entirely of white men.

One of those jurors was Charles Kroen, then a 47-year-old refinery worker.

Kroen figured there was no way he would serve on the jury. Defense lawyers learned he was Catholic, a religion the Klan despised, and, even worse, a Yankee who moved to Mississippi in 1957.

Somehow, he made the panel.

During deliberations, some jurors criticized the fact the state’s key witness -- Billy Roy Pitts, who testified he went on the raid to kill Dahmer -- was a convicted felon now that he had pleaded guilty to murder.

Kroen stood and spoke.

‘‘I’ll have my say and then I’ll sit down. This man was killed because he wanted people to be able to vote. They burned his house.

‘‘Just because I’m Catholic, someone could decide tomorrow to do the same thing and burn my house. Just because you’re Baptist, someone could decide tomorrow to do the same thing to you.’’

One juror scoffed, ‘‘Oh, they wouldn’t do that.’’

Another juror interjected: ‘‘Remember Hitler.’’

The room filled with veterans of World War II and the Korean War fell silent for moments.

Kroen said that quiet resolve led jurors to unanimously conclude Sessum had been involved in killing Dahmer.

The conviction also would mark what is believed to be Mississippi’s first conviction of a Klansman for killing a black man. Sessum was sentenced to life in prison.

‘‘I sat on a jury with 11 of the finest men I’ve ever met in my life,’’ Kroen recalled. ‘‘I was proud to have served on it.’’

Other trials resulted in juries convicting three other Klansmen, each sentenced to life in prison.

But Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard identified in testimony as ordering the raid, walked free when juries deadlocked, failing to convict him.

Race relations improved

For years, this sprawling city of more than 40,000 was little more than a stopover for tourists traveling somewhere else.

It still bears the nickname the ‘‘Hub City,’’ its only seeming glory its close proximity to New Orleans and other cities.

There’s still evidence of that. A billboard on one highway encourages tourists traveling to casinos to stop here and ‘‘sleep cheap.’’

The road to empowering black citizens, however, has been rocky.

After black residents challenged the city’s at-large system of selecting leaders in 1977, testimony detailed racial polarization in voting.

One city commissioner was asked on the witness stand what he believed black residents thought of the at-large form of government. He replied, ‘‘Don’t know and don’t care.’’

Relations have improved since but aren’t perfect, Holloway said. ‘‘There are some things that are still disproportionate . . . in terms of the character of jobs, underemployment, institutional needs. That should not overshadow the progresses that have been made.’’

For instance, the city has poured money into the all-black community of Palmer’s Crossing since annexing it seven years ago, he said. ‘‘I think tremendous improvements have been made.’’

At Hattiesburg High School, students read Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘‘Letter From the Birmingham Jail’’ in English classes and discuss the concept of diversity.

At the University of Southern Mississippi, which didn’t accept its first black student until the mid- 1960s, minorities now make up about a fifth of the student population.

Today, a key campus building bears the name of Dahmer’s friend, a black student denied entrance four decades ago: Clyde Kennard.

Town works on its image

In recent years, Hattiesburg has consistently been ranked as one of the nation’s top places to live.

In 1992, the U.S. Conference of Mayors named Hattiesburg the ‘‘Most Livable Small Community.’’

The New York Times recently featured Hattiesburg as an attractive place to retire.

Nooncaster said those rankings are no accident.

‘‘I’ve been here for 45 years, and I’ve watched what has happened since the incident,’’ he said. ‘‘The way this total community responded instead of dividing into two factions -- even the segregationists worked together to heal this issue to make this a community not known for its outbreak of violence between blacks and whites.’’

The work and sacrifices of Vernon Dahmer and his family on issues such as voter registration are a constant memory, Holloway said. ‘‘I think in a small way, the Dahmer family has been as paramount to Hattiesburg as Dr. (Martin Luther) King has been to the country.’’

Family reflects on legacy

On Friday, Vernon Dahmer’s widow, Ellie, and his son, Vernon Jr., stood next to his grave at Shady Grove Baptist Church.

‘‘We still miss him,’’ she said. ‘‘We would like for him to see the progress.’’

That progress includes better opportunities, she said. ‘‘Jobs have really opened up for blacks.’’

But, she said, ‘‘I think he’d be saddened by the turnout for the vote. He’d say, ‘What did I give my life for?’ ’’

The cemetery transports Vernon Dahmer Jr. to the times he spent with his father. ‘‘One day I’ll be here,’’ he said.

He held his hands over his face as tears flowed.

‘‘I feel very close to my father. He taught me all the tricks and trades of surviving in the world as a black person, how to be a decent, honest and caring citizen. All of that created a special bond.’’

Vernon Dahmer Firebombing in Hattiesburg