Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

368 • KU KLUX KLANH. Bowers, to life imprisonment for the 10 January 1966 murder byfirebombing of Vernon Dahmer Sr., a local activist of the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whoused his rural store as a place to register other black voters. Bowerswas a leader of the White Knights group when it carried out themurder of three young civil rights activists on 21 June 1964, whichprompted one of the largest FBI investigations in the history of thesouth until the bodies of the three victims were recovered six weekslater. Bowers was never charged with this crime, although it is virtuallycertain that he ordered these killings.On 10 July 1997 the FBI reopened its investigation of the 1963bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church. Although the original mastermindbehind this attack, Robert E. Chambliss, had been convictedin 1977 for the murders of those killed in this attack and had died inprison, new evidence had come to light that could identify those associatesof Chambliss who had until then escaped arrest and prosecution.On 21 May 2001 the state of Alabama began trying Thomas Blantonand Bobby F. Cherry on murder charges for the deaths of the fourschoolgirls killed in the bombing. One suspect, Harman Frank Cash,had died in 1994. On 17 May 2000 Thomas Blanton was convictedon four counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, and on22 May 2002 Bobby F. Cherry was also convicted on four counts ofmurder and also sentenced to life imprisonment.On 28 February 2003 Ernest Avants was convicted in federal courtfor the Klan murder of Ben Chester White in 1966. Avants had beentried and acquitted by a Mississippi state court in 1967 for the crime.On 21 June 2005 Edgar Ray Killen was convicted for manslaughterin the Klan conspiracy and murder of three civil rights workers,James Caney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, in Mississippiin 1964, the case that had led President Lyndon Johnson toorder an all-out FBI dragnet to find the disappeared civil rights workersand to arrest their suspected murderers.While estimates put Klan membership at around 3,000 in 2005, bylate 2006 estimates had risen to 5,000 or so. There are currently atleast five Klan organizations having memberships spanning severalstates, the largest of which is thought to be the Knights of the KuKlux Klan, which is now led by Thomas Robb and headquarteredin Zinc, Arkansas. Observers of Klan activism, such as the SouthernPoverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, have attrib-