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Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer, Sr. (March 10, 1908 – January 11, 1966) was an African American Civil Rights leader and president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. ==Early life== 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.〔Taylor Branch, ''Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 58-59〕 Vernon Dahmer attended Bay Spring High School until the tenth grade; failing to graduate. Vernon was light-skinned enough to pass as a Caucasian man,〔(Jr, Gordon A.: ''Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote'', University Press of Mississippi, 2010, p. 178 )〕 but instead chose to forgo the privileges of living as a Caucasian man and faced the daily challenges of being an African American man in Mississippi during that time. Dahmer had three wives throughout the entirety of his life. His first wife was Winnie Laura Mott; they had ended their marriage of five years in divorce. In 1949, Dahmer had remarried to a woman named Aura Lee Smith. Unfortunately, Aura had 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 had met after working on the school board together and married in March 1952. The couple had two children of their own together to add to the six children Vernon had had with his first two wives; 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 boarder; 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. Dahmer was a member of Shady Grove Baptist Church where he served as a music director and Sunday School teacher. Dahmer was the owner of a grocery store, sawmill, planing mill, and also cotton farm. Dahmer's main objective was to make a living for himself and to provide work for somebody else. Vernon would hire local individuals from the community to work for him and did not discriminate between black or white.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vernon Dahmer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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