Vernon Dahmer
| Vernon Dahmer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer March 10, 1908 Kelly Settlement Forrest County, Mississippi |
| Died | January 10, 1966 (aged 57) Hattiesburg, Mississippi |
| Organization |
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) |
| Movement | Civil Rights Movement |
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer, Sr. (March 10, 1908 – January 10, 1966) was a leader with the Civil Rights Movement and president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Vernon Dahmer was born on March 10, 1908, in the Kelly Settlement, Forrest County, Mississippi to Ellen Louvenia (Kelly) and George Washington Dahmer. George Dahmer was a Caucasian man identified as being an honest, hardworking man with outstanding integrity. His occupation was a farmer. Ellen Kelly was biracial because of her mother, Henrietta. Henrietta was a biracial child born out of wedlock by a white slave owner, O.B Kelly, and one of his slaves. She was given to a black family, called the McCombs.
Dahmer attended Bay Spring High School until the tenth grade; failing to graduate. He was light-skinned enough to pass as a white man, but instead chose to forgo the privileges of living as a Caucasian man and faced the daily challenges of being a black man in Mississippi during that time.
Dahmer was married three times. His first wife was Winnie Laura Mott; their marriage of five years ended in divorce. In 1949, Dahmer remarried; this time to a woman named Aura Lee Smith. Unfortunately, Aura died after a long illness. Ellie Jewel Davis was his third and final wife; she was a teacher from Rose Hill, Mississippi, and had recently moved to Forrest County. The couple met after working on the school board together and married in March 1952. The couple had two children together to add to the six children Dahmer had with his first two wives, making a total of seven boys and one girl. The family and their home was located north of Forrest County and was part of the Kelly Settlement, close to the Jones County border; the settlement (named for Dahmer's maternal grandfather). Ellie Dahmer taught for many years in Richton, Mississippi and retired in 1987 from the Forrest County school system.
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