The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; its legal representation for victims of hate groups; its monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and its educational programs that promote tolerance.[2][3][4] The SPLC classifies as hate groups organizations that it considers to denigrate or assault entire groups of people, typically for attributes that are beyond their control.[5]
In 1971, Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin Jr. founded the SPLC as a civil rights law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama.[6] Civil rights leader Julian Bond soon joined Dees and Levin and served as president of the board between 1971 and 1979.[7] The SPLC’s litigating strategy involved filing civil suits for damages on behalf of the victims of hate group harassment, threats, and violence with the goal of financially depleting the responsible groups and individuals. While it originally focused on damages done by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, throughout the years the SPLC has become involved in other civil rights causes, among them, cases concerned with institutional racial segregation and discrimination, the mistreatment of aliens, and the separation of church and state. Along with civil rights organizations such as the AntiDefamation League, the SPLC provides information about hate groups to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[8]
The SPLC does not accept government funds, nor does it charge its clients legal fees or share in their courtawarded judgments. Its programs are supported by successful fundraising efforts, which have helped it to build substantial monetary reserves. Its fundraising appeals and accumulation of reserves have been subject to controversy.
The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded by civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin Jr. in 1971 as a law firm to handle antidiscrimination cases in the United States. SPLC’s first president was Julian Bond who served as president until 1979 and remains on its board of directors. In 1979 the Center brought the first of its many cases against various Ku Klux Klan type organizations. In 1981 the Center began its Klanwatch project to monitor the activities of the KKK. That project, now called Hatewatch, has been expanded to include seven other types of hate organizations.[9]
In July 1983, the center’s office was firebombed, destroying the building and records.[10] In February 1985 Klan members and a Klan sympathizer pleaded guilty to federal and state charges related to the fire.[11] At the trial Klansmen Joe M. Garner and Roy T. Downs Jr. along with Charles Bailey pleaded guilty to conspiring to intimidate, oppress and threaten members of black organizations represented by SPLC.”[11] According to Dees over 30 people have been jailed in connection with plots to kill him or blow up the center.[12]
In 1984 Dees became an assassination target of The Order, a revolutionary white supremacist group, for his work with the SPLC.[13] Another target, radio host Alan Berg, was killed by the group outside his Colorado home.[14]
In 1987, SPLC won a case against the United Klans of America for the lynching of Michael Donald, a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama.[15] The SPLC used an unprecedented legal strategy of holding an organization responsible for the crimes of individual members to help produce a $7 judgment for the victim’s mother.[15] The verdict bankrupted the United Klans of America and resulted in its national headquarters being sold for about $52,000 to help satisfy the judgment.[16] In 1987 five members of a Klan offshoot, the White Patriot Party, were indicted for stealing military weaponry and plotting to kill Dees.[17]
In 1989 the Center unveiled its Civil Rights Memorial designed by Andrew Luck Colts Jersey Maya Lin.[18] The Center’s “Teaching Tolerance” project was initiated in 1991, and its “Klanwatch” program has gradually expanded to include other antihate monitoring projects and a list of reported hate groups in the United States.
In October 1990, the SPLC won $12.5 in damages against Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance when a Portland, Oregon, jury held the neoNazi group liable in the beating death of an Ethiopian immigrant.[19] While Metzger lost his home and ability to publish material, the full amount of the multimillion dollar reward was not recovered.[20] In 1995, a group of four white males were indicted for planning to blow up the SPLC.[21] In May T.Y. Hilton Jersey 1998, three white supremacists were arrested for allegedly planning a nationwide campaign of assassinations and bombings targeting “Morris Dees, an undisclosed federal judge in Illinois, a black radioshow host in Missouri, Dees’s Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and the AntiDefamation League in New York.”[22]
In July 2007, the SPLC filed suit against the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) in Meade County, where in July 2006 five Klansmen allegedly beat Jordan Gruver, a 16yearold boy of Panamanian descent, at a Kentucky county fair.[12] After filing the suit the SPLC received nearly a dozen threats.[12][12] During the November 2008 trial on the lawsuit, Authentic T.Y. Hilton Jersey a former member of the IKA said that the Klan head told him to kill Dees.[23]
In 2008, the SPLC and Dees were featured on National Geographic’s Inside American Terror exploring their litigation against several branches of the Ku Klux Klan.[24]
The Southern Poverty Law Center has won many T.Y. Hilton Colts Jersey notable civil cases resulting in monetary awards for the plaintiffs. The SPLC has said it does not accept any portion of monetary judgments.[25][26][27] Dees and the SPLC “have been credited with devising innovative legal ways to cripple hate groups, including seizing their assets.”[28]
Young Men’s Authentic Andrew Luck Jersey Christian Association
The first SPLC case was filed by Dees against the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Montgomery, Alabama, that “continued to segregate children, going so far as to ban kids who swam at an integrated pool from citywide meets.” In 1969, the YMCA refused to allow two black children to its summer camp, and the SPLC sued on behalf of the children’s parents.[29][30][31] In the course of the lawsuit, Dees uncovered a secret 1958 agreement between the city and the YMCA, in which city officials gave the YMCA control of many city recreational activities.[29][30][31] In 1971 SPLC assumed responsibility for the case. In 1972 the court ruled that Montgomery had given the YMCA control “with a municipal character,” and “ordered the YMCA to stop its discriminatory, segregationist practices.”[29][30][31] Years later, the executive director of the Montgomery YMCA thanked Dees for the case because without it, the center would not have been able to desegregate.[31]In 1981 the SPLC took the Ku Klux Klan to court to stop racial harassment and intimidation of .[32][33] In May 1981, the courts sided with the and the SPLC, forcing the Klan to end harassment.[34]In 1981, the SPLC won a case that ordered an Alabama county to pay salaries to the staff of its first black probate judge. This federally overruled a state law to the contrary and reinstated a practice that had been in use for more than two decades with other probate judges despite being at odds with the contested state law.[35]
White Patriot Party
In 1982, gunbrandishing members of the paramilitary styled Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Bobby Person, a black prison guard and several others, including a white woman who had befriended blacks. In 1984 Person became the lead plaintiff in Person v. District Court for Eastern North Carolina. The harassment and threats continued during litigation and the court issued an order prohibiting any person from interfering with other persons inside the courthouse.[36]
In January 1985 the court issued a consent order that prohibited the group’s “Grand Dragon,” Glenn Miller, and his followers from operating a paramilitary organization, parading in black neighborhoods, and from harassing, threatening or harming any black person or Andrew Luck Jersey white persons who associated with black persons. Subsequently, the court dismissed the plaintiff’s claim for damages.[36]
Within a year the court found Miller and his followers, now calling themselves the White Patriot Party, in criminal contempt for violating the consent order. Miller was sentenced to six months in prison followed by a threeyear probationary period, during which he was banned from associating with members of any racist group such as the White Patriot Party. Miller refused to obey the terms of his probation. He made underground “declarations of war” against Jews and the federal government before being arrested again. The cost of work for the trial was absorbed by AntiDefamation League as well as the SPLC.[44] Metzger still makes payments to Seraw’s family.[45]
