Vernon F. Dahmer, Sr.

Vernon Dahmer was born in 1908 in the Kelly Settlement and became a farmer and businessman, with a cotton farm, a grocery, a sawmill and a planing mill, hiring Black and white workers. His farm served as a base for SNCC volunteers working on voter registration. By January 1966 threats had the family sleeping in shifts. His wife, Ellie, taught school and in 1992 became a Forrest County election commissioner, a post she held for more than a decade. Four Klansmen were convicted in state court, helped by the guilty plea and testimony of Billy Roy Pitts.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Military History Museum — 5.5 mi
  The wooden USO club that opened in March 1942 for Black soldiers training at Camp Shelby, now a museum of African American military service from the Revolutionary War to Iraq.
• Longleaf Trace — 5.6 mi
  A 44-mile paved rail-trail from Hattiesburg to Prentiss on the old Pearl & Leaf Rivers and Mississippi Central line that hauled the Piney Woods timber.
• Forrest County Courthouse and Dahmer Memorial — 6.0 mi
  The courthouse where Hattiesburg held Freedom Day on January 22, 1964, and where a memorial now honors Vernon Dahmer, killed by Klansmen in 1966.
• Hub City Historic District — 6.1 mi
  Hattiesburg's twelve-block downtown, a railroad town laid out in 1880s pine country, with the Saenger Theater, the courthouse and the 1910 depot.

More markers nearby

• Evelyn Gandy House — 2.5 mi
• Roots of Rock 'n' Roll — 5.5 mi
• Eureka School — 5.5 mi
• St. Paul Methodist Church — 5.6 mi