When evil lived in Laurel : the "White Knights" and the murder of Vernon Dahmer

Resource Information

The work When evil lived in Laurel : the "White Knights" and the murder of Vernon Dahmer represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Audio, Nonmusical, Sounds, Music.

Label

When evil lived in Laurel : the "White Knights" and the murder of Vernon Dahmer

Title remainder

the "White Knights" and the murder of Vernon Dahmer

Statement of responsibility

Curtis Wilkie

Creator

• Wilkie, Curtis

Contributor

• Graybill, Stephen

Author

• Wilkie, Curtis

Narrator

• Graybill, Stephen

Subject

• Audiobooks
• Biographies
• Bowers, Samuel Holloway, 1924-2006
• Dahmer, Vernon Ferdinand, 1908-1966
• Downloadable audio books
• Electronic books
• Ku Klux Klan (1915- ), White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan -- History
• Landrum, Tom, 1932-
• African American civil rights workers -- Mississippi -- History
• United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation -- Officials and employees
• Laurel (Miss.) -- Race relations
• African Americans -- Crimes against -- Mississippi -- History

Genre

• Downloadable audio books
• Electronic books
• Biographies
• Audiobooks

Language

eng

Summary

The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights-era killing.By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well known in south Mississippi. A light-skinned Black man, he was a farmer, grocery store owner, and two-time president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP. He and Medgar Evers founded a youth NAACP chapter in Hattiesburg, and for years after Evers's assassination Dahmer was the chief advocate for voting rights in a county where Black registration was shamelessly suppressed. This put Dahmer in the crosshairs of the White Knights, with headquarters in nearby Laurel. Already known as one of the most violent sects of the KKK in the South, the group carried out his murder in a raid that burned down his home and store. A year before, Tom Landrum, a young, unassuming member of a family with deep Mississippi roots, joined the Klan to become an FBI informant. He penetrated the White Knights' secret circles, recording almost daily journal entries. He risked his life, and the safety of his young family, to chronicle extensively the clandestine activities of the Klan. Veteran journalist Curtis Wilkie draws on his exclusive access to Landrum's journals to re-create these events--the conversations, the incendiary nighttime meetings, the plans leading up to Dahmer's murder and its erratic execution--culminating in the conviction and imprisonment of many of those responsible for Dahmer's death. In riveting detail, When Evil Lived in Laurel plumbs the nature and harrowing consequences of institutional racism, and brings fresh light to this chapter in the history of civil rights in the South--one with urgent implications for today

Accompanying matter

technical information on music

Cataloging source

TEFOD

Dewey number

305.8009762/55

Form of composition

not applicable

Format of music

not applicable

LC call number

E185.93.M6

Literary text for sound recordings

other

Music parts

not applicable

PerformerNote

Read by Stephen Graybill

Transposition and arrangement

not applicable