Hate Groups in America
Lecture and "Town Meeting" with Morris Dees, Jr.
Southern Poverty Law Center
Lecture: "Hate Groups in America"
March 5, 1995
Fine Arts Center concert hall
"Town Meeting with Morris Dees, Jr."
March 5, 1995
Union Video Center/TV-19 studio
In the face of growing rifts between our respective communities, the Office of ALANA Affairs, Black Student Union, Hillel, and the Office of Jewish Affairs collaborated to bring Morris Dees, Jr to UMass Amherst, in an effort to educate the campus community about bigotry, hate crimes, and organized hate groups in America.
Such groups pose a threat to all of us—whether Black, Jewish, gay, or even Catholic—and so we recognized the need for racial and religious minorities to work together to combat all forms of bigotry.
Dees co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center with fellow civil rights attorney Joseph J. Levin, Jr. and civil rights activist Julian Bond, in Montgomery, Alabama in 1971. Since then, the SPLC has engaged in civil rights litigation against numerous white supremacist groups including neo-Nazis, Skinheads, the KKK and the Aryan Nation, effectively bankrupting several of these organizations. The SPLC also successfully fought to integrate the Alabama State Troopers.
In 1980, the Center launched its "Klanwatch" project in response to a resurgence in organized racist activity.
When Klan members lynched a Black man in Mobile, Alabama in 1981, Dees and the SPLC launched an historic lawsuit. They sued the Klan for inciting violence and won a seven million dollar judgment. In 1990, Dees won a $12.5 million verdict for the family of an Ethiopian man murdered by Skinheads in Oregon. As a result of these lawsuits, Dees' life has been repeatedly threatened and his offices burned.
A graduate of the University of Alabama Law School, Dees has received numerous accolades for his work at the SPLC. Trial Lawyers for Public Justice named him "Trial Lawyer of the Year" in 1987; and he received the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award from the National Education Association in 1991.
Recognizing the need to educate young people about the civil rights movement, Dees pushed for the creation of Civil Rights Memorial. Designed by architect Maya Lin (who also designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.), the memorial bears the names of 40 men, women and childen who lost their lives during the civil rights movement. It was dedicated in 1989 in Montgomery.
Dees is the author of two books, the autobiographical A Season for Justice and Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi.
In addition to his public lecture in the Fine Arts Center, Dees participated in a televised "Town Meeting" with two UMass faculty members and 24 Jewish, Black, and Latino/a student leaders.
This successful collaboration helped turn the tide of Black/Jewish relations on campus, which for years had been overtly hostile. The "Town Meeting" was honored at UVC’s annual awards banquet as the Best Program of the Year.
To learn more, visit Southern Poverty Law Center.
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