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.
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