Morris Dees

Morris Dees
Morris Dees
Born Morris Seligman Dees, Jr.
December 16, 1936 (1936-12-16) (age 74)
Shorter, Alabama[1]
Residence Montgomery, Alabama
Occupation civil rights and social justice activist
Religion Unitarian[2]

Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. (born December 16, 1936) is the co-founder and chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and a former direct mail marketeer for book publishing.[3] Along with his law partner, Joseph J. Levin Jr., Dees founded the SPLC in 1971,[4] the start of a legal career dedicated to suing racist organizations and other controversial discrimination cases.

Contents

Early life

Dees was born to a farming family in Alabama in 1936.[3] After graduation from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1960, he returned to Montgomery, Alabama and opened a law office.

Marketing career

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.[5]

Civil rights legal practice

In 1969, Dees filed suit to integrate the all-white Montgomery YMCA.[6] 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.

Civil lawsuit strategy

Dees was one of the principal architects of an innovative strategy of using civil lawsuits to secure a court judgment for money damages against an organization for a wrongful act and then use the courts to seize its assets (money, land, buildings, other property) to pay the judgment.

SPLC lawyers used this legal strategy to hold the Klan accountable for the acts of its members. In 1981, Dees successfully sued the Ku Klux Klan and won a $7 million judgment for the mother of Michael Donald, a black lynching victim in Alabama.[7][8] Payment of the judgment bankrupted the United Klans of America and resulted in its national headquarters being sold to help satisfy the judgment. All funds secured in this manner were paid to the family of the deceased.

A decade later, in 1991, Dees obtained a judgment of $12 million against Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance.[7] He was also instrumental in securing a $6.5 million judgment against Aryan Nations in 2001. 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.

Dees' legal actions against racial nationalist groups have made him a target of criticism from many of these organizations. He has received numerous death threats from these groups, and a number of their web sites make strong accusations against him and the Southern Poverty Law Center.[9] Over 30 people have been jailed in connection with plots to kill Dees or blow up the center.[10] Most recently a July 29, 2007, letter allegedly came from Hal Turner, a radio talk show host, paid FBI informant and white supremacist, after the SPLC filed a lawsuit against the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) in Meade County, Kentucky.[10] During the IKA trial a former member of the IKA said that the Klan head told him to kill Dees.[11]

Political activity

He served as Senator George McGovern's national finance director in 1972,[12] 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.[13] Dees ran for the board of the Sierra Club as a protest candidate in 2004, qualifying by petition.[14] His campaign was not designed to win election, but to publicize the views of some board members and candidates running for election in a bid to return population control to the organization's agenda. Dees received 7554 votes, coming in 16th out of 17 candidates in the election.

Praise

In an address on March 1, 2007, at the University of Texas School of Law, Judge Keith Ellison described Morris Dees as “his generation's most valiant and effective soldier in the fight for civil rights and civil liberties.”[15]

Criticism

Dees has faced criticism that he uses too much of the Southern Poverty Law Center's fundraising intake as personal income - and even accusations that the SPLC exists mostly as a fundraising vehicle. A 2000 article by Ken Silverstein in Harper's Magazine, titled "The Church of Morris Dees", alleged that Dees kept the SPLC focused on fighting anti-minority groups like the KKK, instead of on issues like homelessness, mostly because of the greater fundraising potential of the former. The article also claimed that the SLPC "spends twice as much on fund-raising--$5.76 million last year--as it does on legal services for victims of civil rights abuses."[16] In 2005, Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden called Dees "nothing more than a scam artist."[17] Stephen Bright, an Atlanta-based civil rights attorney, wrote in 2007 that Dees was "a con man and fraud", who "has taken advantage of naive, well-meaning people–some of moderate or low incomes–who believe his pitches and give to his $175-million operation."[18]

Awards and recognition

In 2006, the law firm of Skadden Arps partnered with the University of Alabama School of Law to create the Morris Dees Justice Award in honor of Dees, an Alabama graduate. The award is given annually to a lawyer who has "devoted his or her career to serving the public interest and pursuing justice, and whose work has brought positive change in the community, state or nation".[19]

Over the last several years, Dees has presented numerous lectures on civil rights and justice at universities.[20][21][22] In 2009, he was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony for San Francisco State University.[23]

Media appearances

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

The Dees 1991 autobiography A Season for Justice was updated in 2003 with new material about his case against the Aryan Nations in Idaho and reissued as A Lawyer's Journey: The Morris Dees Story in a biographical series published by the American Bar Association.

Dees' work was featured on the National Geographic's "Inside American Terror" in 2008.[24]

Bibliography

Footnotes

  1. ^ "SPLCenter.org: Morris Dees Biography". Southern Poverty Law Center. 2009. http://www.splcenter.org/center/history/dees.jsp. Retrieved 2009-05-25. 
  2. ^ Dees 1991, p. 94
  3. ^ a b "Attorney Morris Dees pioneer in using 'damage litigation' to fight hate groups". CNN. September 8, 2000. Archived from the original on 2007-12-23. http://web.archive.org/web/20071223063535/http://archives.cnn.com/2000/LAW/09/08/morris.dees.profile/. Retrieved 2007-08-17. 
  4. ^ Dees, Morris, and Steve Fiffer. 1991. A Season For Justice. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 132-133. ISBN 0-684-19189-X
  5. ^ Kent, Francis B (December 14, 1975). "Poverty Law Center Scores in South". Los Angeles Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/609530622.html?dids=609530622:609530622&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Dec+14%2C+1975&author=FRANCIS+B+KENT&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(1886-Current+File)&edition=&startpage=G1&desc=Poverty+Law+Center+Scores+in+South. Retrieved 2007-05-17. 
  6. ^ "Smith v. Young Men's Christian Association". Southern Poverty Law Center. June 11, 1969. http://www.splcenter.org/legal/docket/files.jsp?cdrID=36. Retrieved 2007-09-18. 
  7. ^ a b Andrea Stone, "Morris Dees: At the Center of the Racial Storm," USA Today, 3 August 1996, A-7.
  8. ^ "The Nation Klan Must Pay $7 Million". Los Angeles Times. 13 February 1987. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/58240562.html?dids=58240562:58240562&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Feb+13%2C+1987&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&edition=&startpage=2&desc=The+Nation+Klan+Must+Pay+%247+Million. Retrieved 2007-09-18. 
  9. ^ "Group is accused of plotting assassinations, bombings. 2 others will plead guilty Thursday." St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) (May 13, 1998): pB1.
  10. ^ a b Klass, Kym (17 August 2007). "Southern Poverty Law Center beefs up security". Montgomery Advertiser. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. http://web.archive.org/web/20070927192930/http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070814/NEWS/708140328/1001. Retrieved 2007-09-18. 
  11. ^ "Former member: Ky. Klan plotted to kill attorney". Associated Press. 13 November 2008. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jlythDb85xRJcZoWIjQxZqNYH-MgD94E75MO0. Retrieved 2007-09-18. 
  12. ^ Stone, Andrea (1996-08-03). "Morris Dees: At center of the racial storm". USA Today. 
  13. ^ Shogan, Robert (October 28, 1979). "Kennedy to Tell Candidacy Prior to Thanksgiving". Los Angeles Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/683596802.html?dids=683596802:683596802&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Oct+28%2C+1979&author=ROBERT+SHOGAN&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(1886-Current+File)&edition=&startpage=A14&desc=Kennedy+to+Tell+Candidacy+Prior+to+Thanksgiving. Retrieved 2007-07-17. 
  14. ^ "Morris Dees' Sierra Club candidate statement seeks tolerance". Southern Poverty Law Center. January 22, 2004. http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=47. Retrieved 2007-05-17. 
  15. ^ Judge Keith Ellison. http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/publicinterest/docs/JudgeEllisonAddressJudgeJusticeReception.pdf
  16. ^ The church of Morris Dees: How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance, Ken Silverstein, 'Harper's Magazine, November 2000
  17. ^ C-SPAN Q&A transcript, Brian Lamb & Wesley Pruden, June 5, 2005
  18. ^ The Southern Poverty Business Model, Ken Silverstein, Harper's Magazine blog, November 2, 2007
  19. ^ Morris Dees Justice Award. http://www.morrisdeesaward.com [accessed 1/13/09]
  20. ^ "Morris Dees Speaking". Emporia State University. 2006. http://www.emporia.edu/bonner/dees.htm. Retrieved 2007-09-18. 
  21. ^ "Civil Rights Legend Morris Dees to Discuss Litigating Against Hate Groups". University of Texas at Austin. March 2007. http://www.utexas.edu/law/news/2007/021207_dees.html. Retrieved 2009-01-13. 
  22. ^ "Morris Dees to speak on "The Current Status of Hate Groups in the United States"". University of Michigan. March 2007. http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=3169. Retrieved 2007-09-18. 
  23. ^ Zinko, Carolyne (2009-05-23). "Civil rights icons lead S.F. State graduation". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/23/BA1N17Q7RT.DTL. Retrieved 2009-05-25. 
  24. ^ "Micheal McDonald clip on KKK: Inside American Terror". National Geographic. 2008. http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/inside/3954/Overview#tab-Videos/05946_00. Retrieved 2008-11-18. 

References

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