In 1962 about a third of Forrest County was Black and only about fifty Black residents were registered to vote. The circuit clerk, Theron Lynd, refused to answer applicants' questions and gave them the hardest sections of the state constitution to interpret, and he ignored a federal injunction against it. SNCC organizers Hollis Watkins and Curtis Hayes began working with local people that summer. On January 22, 1964, about two hundred people picketed in the rain at this courthouse while others lined up to apply. Seventy-five stood in line all day, and only twelve were let inside. The pickets, which became known as the "Perpetual Picket," ran on through Freedom Summer.
Vernon Dahmer led the Forrest County NAACP from the Kelly Settlement, where he farmed, ran a grocery store and kept mills. After the Voting Rights Act he kept a voter registration book in his store and offered to pay the poll taxes of anyone who could not afford them. In the early hours of January 10, 1966, Klansmen shot up his house and store and threw firebombs. His family escaped; Dahmer, badly burned, fired back at the attackers and died of smoke inhalation the next day. From his hospital bed he said, "If you don't vote, you don't count."
One man pleaded guilty and juries convicted four others. In 1998 Sam Bowers, the Klan's Imperial Wizard, was tried here after four earlier trials ended without a verdict and received a life sentence. A memorial statue and a wall carrying Dahmer's words now stand on the courthouse grounds, at 630 Main Street.
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