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Jan. 31, 2005 Volume 29, Issue 22 |
Civil rights litigator Dees to speak
The co-founder and chief trial counsel of a nationally recognized Alabama civil rights and justice organization speaks Feb. 3 as part of the university's Black History Month observance.
Morris S. Dees Jr. of Montgomery's Southern Poverty Law Center will be featured at a 7 p.m. public program in the Colvard Union ballroom. His visit is sponsored by the Richard Holmes Cultural Diversity Center.
Dees is the Scots-lineage great-grandson of a Confederate soldier and the son of a rural Central Alabama cotton farmer. The University of Alabama law school graduate began his professional life with a private law practice in the Alabama state capital and the continuing leadership of a successful national direct mail publishing business he'd started while a college student.
During the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, attorney Dees became active in aiding minorities in court. In 1967, he filed suit to stop construction of a white Alabama university in a city with an established, predominately black state college. A year later, he filed another suit to integrate the all-white Montgomery YMCA.
With fellow Montgomery attorney Joseph J. Levin Jr., he founded the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971. Since that time, the organization-supported by contributions from nearly 500,000 private U.S. citizens-has engaged in a string of civil rights lawsuits.
In 1980, the center responded to a resurgence in organized racist activities with the creation of Klanwatch, a project that monitors hate groups and develops legal strategies for protecting citizens from violence-prone organizations. Its $7 million judgment against the United Klans of America on behalf of the mother of a lynched Mobile black man set a legal precedent.
For his work and that of the SPLC, Dees, the 68-year-old married father of three sons and a daughter, has received a host of honors and tributes. He is the author of an autobiography, "A Season for Justice" (Charles Scribner's Sons), and "Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi" (Villard Books), which chronicles the trial and $12.5 million judgment against white supremacist Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance group.
"Gathering Storm" (HarperCollins Publishers), his latest book, deals with the dangers posed by today's domestic terrorists.
For more information about Dees' campus visit, contact Holmes Center director Aretha Jones-Cook at 325-2033.