Oscar Roosevelt Dove and his wife, Grace Betcon Dove, founded the Oscar’s Mortuary Incorporated in New Bern, North Carolina on January 16, 1960 to give quality funeral services to their community. Oscar Dove was a prominent figure in his community and the Civil Rights movement. An active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for twelve years, Dove was a known integrationist leader as well as a member of the Bi-Racial Committee.
On Sunday, January 24, 1965, about an hour after dynamite was placed under two cars during a regional NAACP meeting at the St. Peter’s African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New Bern, dynamite was also placed at Oscar’s Mortuary ripping up a driveway, a garage door, and breaking the windows in an ambulance garage. Dove informed authorities that this was not the first incident of its kind at his funeral home as he indicated that in July of 1964, a cross was burned in front of his establishment and that on several occasions bottles had been thrown through the front windows.
Three members of the Ku Klux Klan targeted and bombed Oscar’s Mortuary and the two cars outside of St. Peter’s. Raymond Mills, Laurie Fillingame, and Edward Fillingame were arrested for the three bombings. According to the enclosed court documents from June 2, 1965, Raymond Mills and Laurie Fillingame received five-year jail sentences that were reduced to three years probation; Edward Fillingame received a two-year jail sentence that was also reduced to three years probation. Raymond Mills also had to pay restitution to Oscar Dove in the amount of $448.00.
Adapted from an essay submitted with historical marker application by Rosanne Wilson
Image: Oscar's Mortuary. Courtesy of the African American Heritage and Culture Center of New Bern.
Citations
“Blasts Rip Negro Funeral Home, Cars Near Church”. Tuscan Daily Citizen, Tuscan, Arizona, January 25, 1965, p 40
“Close Kin Go Bond For Three Held in New Bern Bombings: Real Estate is Surety For Appearance at Hearing”. The Sun Journal, New Bern, January 30, 1965, p.1
“FBI Offers Assistance in Bombings”. High Point Enterprise, High Point, NC January 25, 1965, p 2
“FBI Seizes 3 Carolina whites In bombings Near Negro Rally”. Times Machine: January 30, 1965 - NYTimes.com, p.10
“Ku Klux Klan Official Arrested For Bombing”. Madera Tribune, Madera, CA, Volume 73, Number 183, 29 January 1965 p. 1
“Moore Condemns New Bern Violence”. Burlington Daily News, Burlington, NC January 26, 1965, p 3
“Mortuary, Two Cars Damaged as Racists Bomb New Bern”. The Carolinian Raleigh, N.C., January 30, 1965, p 1
“New Bern Blasts are Probed”. Twin City Sentinel, Winston Salem, NC, January 25, 1965, p 1
“New Bern Shocked by Three Blasts in Negro Section: Two Cars and Mortuary are Damaged By Explosions”. The Sun Journal, New Bern, January 25, 1965, p.1
“SBI Aids New Bern Blasts Probe”. Raleigh News Observer, Raleigh, NC, January 26, 1965, p.1
“Sound Sleuthing Fingers Three as Sunday Bombers”. Sun Journal, New Bern, January 29, 1965 p 1
“Three Held In New Bern Blasts”. The Daily Record, Dunn, NC, January 29, 1965, p 1
“Three Men Arrested in Bombing”, The San Antonio Express and News, San Antonio, TX, January 30, 1965 p. 3
“Two Explosions Damage Negro Funeral Home, Cars”. Greensboro Daily News, Greensboro, NC, Morning edition, January 25, 1965, p 1
Federal Bureau of Investigation report, February 9, 1965, RE: Edward Earl Fillingame, Laurie Latham Fillingame, Raymond Duguid Mills, New Bern Bombing, Dan Killian Moore, Governors Papers, State Archives, North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, hereinafter cited as FBI, New Bern Bombing Report.
Hawkins, Karen Medlin, Coastal Progress: Eastern North Carolina’s War on Poverty, 1963-1972, Dissertation, UNC-Greensboro, August, 2012 p156-157
Hawkins, Karen Medlin, Everybody’s Problem: The War on Poverty in Eastern North Carolina (Southern Dissent) University Press of Florida, Gainesville 2017 p. 63-64
Medlin, Karen E. Reclaiming First-Class Citizenship: The African- American Struggle and Mobilization for Political Rights in New Bern, North Carolina (1948-1979), University Press, Raleigh, NC 2007 p 66-67, p 78
Political Violence and Terrorism in Modern America: A Chronology, Hewitt, Christopher, Praeger Security International, Westport, Connecticut-London 2005 p. 18
The North Carolina Historical Review, October 2008, Vol. 85, No. 4, pp. 379-415 United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Jan 1976 U.S. Government Printing Office, Volume 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, November/December, 1975, Jan 1976 · U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, Page 521
Wilson, Emily Herring, Memories of New Bern: An Oral History Based on Interviews of New Bernians by New Bernians (New Bern: New Bern Historical Society, 1995).