When Evil Lived in Laurel: The "White Knights" and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer

Wilkie, Curtis

ISBN 10: 1324005750 / ISBN 13: 9781324005759

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2021

About this Item

First edition, hardcover, signed by Wilkie on the title page, the book has bumps to the spine ends, slight wear to the cover edges and corners, and a touch of waving to the text block. Overall, a Very Good copy in a like, unclipped dust jacket, which has bumps to the spine ends, and a touch of rubbing to the covers. The jacket is wrapped in Mylar.

Seller Inventory # 205136

Bibliographic Details

• Title: When Evil Lived in Laurel: The "White Knights" and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, New York
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1324005750
• ISBN 13: 9781324005759
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • True Crime
  • Americana

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Curtis Wilkie covered civil rights activity in Mississippi in the 1960s and afterward served as a national and international correspondent for a quarter century at the Boston Globe. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.