Samuel Holloway Bowers (August 25, 1924 – November 5, 2006) was a convicted murderer and a leading white supremacist in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. He was Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Following breakup of the Original Knights in 1964, he co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Bowers was best known for committing two murders of civil rights activists in southern Mississippi. He was responsible for the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner near Philadelphia, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison