Morris Dees

Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. (born December 16, 1936) is the founder and chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). He founded the Center in 1971, the start of a legal career dedicated to suing what they consider hate groups and pursuing controversial cases.

Biography

After graduation from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1960, he returned to Montgomery, Alabama and opened a law office. He ran a book publishing business, Fuller & Dees Marketing Group, which grew to become a successful company in its own right. After what Dees described in his autobiography as "a night of soul searching at a snowed-in Cincinnati airport" in 1967, he sold the company in 1969 to Times Mirror, the parent company of the Los Angeles Times. He used the revenue generated by the sale to found the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971.

Dees' new legal firm began taking part in civil rights cases that frequently put him in the spotlight. He filed suit to stop construction of a white university in an Alabama city that already had a predominantly black state college. In 1969, he filed suit to integrate the all-white Montgomery YMCA.

Dees' most famous cases have involved landmark damage awards that have driven several prominent neo-Nazi groups into bankruptcy, effectively causing them to disband and re-organize under different names and different leaders. In 1981, Dees successfully sued the Ku Klux Klan and won a seven million dollar settlement. This was topped a decade later, when in 1991 he won a judgement of $12 million against White Aryan Resistance. He was also instrumental in the rewarding of a $6.5 million judgement against Aryan Nations in 2001, which splintered that group as well.

In 1972, Dees was the finance director for Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern. He also served as President Jimmy Carter's national finance director in 1976, and as national finance chairman for Senator Ted Kennedy's 1980 Democratic primary presidential campaign against Carter.

The story of Dees' crusade against white supremacist hate groups was fictionalized in a 1991 TV movie entitled Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story.

Dees ran for the board of the Sierra Club as a protest candidate in 2004, qualifying by petition. The SPLC's Mark Potok had written a letter to the Sierra Club in 2003 alerting them to what he called "anti-immigration" forces that he claimed were attempting a takeover of the club's board. The letter's allegations centered on John Tanton and a group of immigration reductionist organizations, including The Social Contract Press that the SPLC claimed is a hate group.[1] Dees wrote his ballot statement to protest against the three board candidates Dees claimed were Tanton-related, using the term "the greening of hate" to describe these candidates, a phrase first coined by radical feminist activist Betsy Hartmann. Dees' fame also attracted the involvement of his long-time opponents, including neo-nazi groups like the National Alliance that urged members participate in the election in order to vote against Dees, but there is no evidence that neo-nazis joined the Sierra Club in response. Within the club critics of Dees noted that he only joined the Sierra Club in 2003 to run for the Board, had no known history of environmental activism, and considered him a "fake candidate." [2]. They further claimed that the so-called "anti-immmigration" forces were actually longtime respected environmental and overpopulation activists. Dees received 7554 votes, coming in 16th out of 17 candidates in the election despite requesting no votes and carrying out no campaign.

Criticism

Dees' tactics and legal actions against hate groups have made him a target of criticism from many of these organizations. He has allegedly received numerous death threats from these groups, and a number of hate web sites make strong accusations against him and the Southern Poverty Law Center. At one time there existed a web site dedicated to gathering "dirt" on Dees, entitled "Deeswatch," though it is apparently now defunct.

While the actions of the SPLC against racist and hate groups have won considerable praise and accolades for Dees, he has also been subjected to criticism for the legal tactics used in obtaining these judgements, which enforce the idea that neo-Nazi groups are subject to "guilt by association," rather than from direct involvement in violent hate crimes.

Newspaper investigations of the SPLC

Dees and the SPLC were the subject of a 1994 investigative report by the Montgomery Advertiser which revealed deceptive fundraising practices and poor management at the Center. The Advertiser investigation also reported criticisms of Dees by former employees for allegedly discriminatory employment policies at the Center. Dees and his organization lobbied aggressively against the report's consideration for journalistic awards, but it was a finalist for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize.[3] Jim Tharpe, the editor of the Advertiser at that time, recounts Dees' campaign:

"The other point is, when this was nominated for a Pulitzer, Morris Dees, who is one of the great fundraisers for a lot of political figures in the country, mobilized some of the best-known and probably most liberal politicians in the country for whom he had raised money and they lobbied the Pulitzer Board against this series, the first lobbying that I know of that kind, and without knowing anything about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s activities they were lobbying the Pulitzer Board not to recognize this work."[4]

Critics on the left

Dees has a number of critics among liberals, including investigative journalist Alexander Cockburn. Some note that Dees has unfairly lumped a number of other movements in with white supremacy, including Second Amendment or gun rights activists, groups that are libertarian in political orientation such as the jury nullification movement, and groups that have their roots among the overpopulation, environmentalist, and population control movements, such as immigration reductionism. Others accuse Dees of overly aggressive fundraising, using blacklisting and guilt by association as organizing tactics, and practicing a sort of left-wing version of McCarthyism.

Jubilee Newspaper article

In a frequently reposted profile web-published in 1996 by the Jubilee Newspaper, "The Newspaper of Record for the American Christian Patriot", Dees is criticized by former Center employees and associates for being more interested in fundraising than legitimate civil rights programs and for allegedly discriminatory employment policies at the Center. [5]

Published books

A Season For Justice, Dees' autobiography, published in 1991. Reprinted in 2001 as A Lawyer's Journey: The Morris Dees Story.

Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat, 1996.

Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi, 1993. It chronicles the trial and $12.5 million judgment against white supremacist Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance group for their responsibility in the beating death of a young black student in Portland, Oregon.

External links